A Very Long Distance Phone Call
by IvyShort
Summary: "No…" she whispered, her voice high and full of pain, her eyes staring out into the hallway where Roy was quickly being escorted out of sight. "Take me with you." Royai.
1. Fear

**This will be a fifteen chapter story! :D Let's see how Ivy fails at plot!**

…**I hope it's okay. I actually wrote out a timetable and word goal per chap and stuff. *crosses fingers***

**Who knows, maybe I'll finish this before we come back from Arizona. I got 12 days! That's over a chapter a day! I don't think I can do that! **

**Spoilers for everything, btw. If I owned FMA, there would have been a series of passionate kisses between Roy and Riza at every suspenseful moment. And at least one Lingfan and Edwin kiss. **

**And Mei would have a much bigger role, 'cause she's just that cool.**

Roy awoke to the first ring that pierced the air of his silent home. Generally he did not receive phone calls at midnight unless his team was drunk, but considering he was always the one to suggest going out, and that it was a Tuesday night, (Or rather, Wednesday morning) that wasn't a very plausible option.

Besides, the bartender always called _Riza, _not him.

Roy rolled out of his bed, butterflies flitting around in his stomach. He cut the phone off mid-ring.

"Roy Mustang," he grunted, wiping the sleep out of his eyes and bracing himself for the worst. He heard the voice that he did not want to hear at midnight in the low, terrified tone it was uttered in. Roy never wanted to hear her voice like that, because it meant she was in trouble.

"I hate to bother you, sir, but there's someone in my house." Riza's voice was low and scared, (she may have been a war hero, and the only woman south of Briggs with a poker face that could rival any military officer's, but she was still a woman, and women do not like it when strange men are in their house at midnight. Riza was still human, no matter what the newspapers said.) and Roy could tell that she was pressed up against her bedroom wall, gun in hand, ready yet unwilling to shoot. She had always been hesitant to shoot anyone if she was only protecting herself. Roy's breath caught in his throat. His nightmares were coming true. _Why couldn't they stay nightmares? _

"I'll be there in a minute, Hawkeye. Be careful," he didn't even bother trying to hang up the phone, choosing instead to rush out the door and leaving it dangling from the cord, thumping against the wall. He wasn't going to be useless. Riza needed him, so he wasn't going to be useless if it took his dying breath.

~*~BREAK~*~

Riza crouched outside in the bushes, gun safety off with her finger on the trigger, ready to fire. When they had moved back to East, her landlord had offered her a small house for the same rent as her apartment had been. He was a kind, generous man (perhaps a little too kind, because Riza was sure she was getting the better end of the deal and if her landlord had not had other tenants, he would be losing money on her) and ignored the news, so he didn't know about the recent claims of her inhumanity.

She heard footsteps behind her and whirled around, heart in her throat. She didn't shoot automatically, but did hold the gun pointed at about the figure's chest, trying to steady her hands and breathe more than the shallow, gasping, terrified half lungfuls of air that seemed to be all she could manage.

It was Roy. Only Roy- her CO, her best friend, childhood companion, who cared enough to rush over in the middle of the night just because _she_ had asked, not a murderer, not a burglar, just Roy. Her heart slowed a few beats, already feeling safer than she had before because he was there. His presence was all it took to calm her.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Colonel," she whispered, removing him from the line of fire. The gun was pointed at the ground now, the ugly barrel threatening the soil instead of the life she had sworn to protect.

"You aren't bothering me in the least. I'll always be there when you need me," her breath caught in her throat as he gently placed his hand on her shoulder. Her ears burned red, and Riza felt thankful for the cover of darkness. _He would always be there when she needed him- _it sounded like a promise. Riza wished desperately that it wasn't an empty one, abandoned at some point in the future when he deemed it unnecessary. Roy Mustang was a man of his word, right? She had known him long enough to know that much.

"Let's go catch that bastard," he growled, his breath hot in her ear. She gripped her gun tighter and gave a curt nod, not trusting herself to speak more than two tight words. No time for distractions now.

"Yes sir."

~*~BREAK~*~

The scream of a living thing being burned alive is possibly the worst sound any one being can utter.

She had heard the screams in Ishval by the thousands, and she herself had screamed when Roy had burned her back. Envy had screamed too, as his skin was boiled away and he died over and over again in mortal agony that never stopped. She had heard the screams before, and the screams were what haunted her and gave her the killer's eyes that Kimblee had pointed out so boldly in Ishval.

Somehow the screams were worse in the middle of the night in her own home. Somehow it was new when the screams continued on and on, mortal agony replacing what was once a life. This was what had killed her in Ishval, the screams that had kept on echoing in her ears. For many it was the bodies, the blood, the suffering, the widespread destruction that had given them the killer's eyes, but not her. The screams of the people still echoed behind her eyes nearly ten years after she had suffocated in the desert sand. Riza felt the gun slip out of her hand and clatter to the floor. She followed the firearm, collapsing in a heap on the wood, her eyes wide open and unseeing.

"Hawkeye! Hawkeye, snap out of it!" she heard Roy shout desperately. "RIZA!" his last word was lost to the sea of screams that had been locked away in a corner of her brain for so long. Her own screams of pain and pity mingling with those in her head.

She slipped into darkness, grateful of the silence that enveloped her with the bringing of unconsciousness.

~**~Break~**~

Pain. Burning, stabbing, shooting pain, and her entire body was aflame with it. Her own screams were the first thing she heard, though Riza was hardly aware that she was shrieking at all.

_Stop it, please just stop it, kill me if you want to, I don't care, but just stop this pain. _She screamed again- was that all she was capable of now?- the shrieks echoing off the walls. She barely heard him when he spoke.

"Please, it's okay, I'm right here, Riza, please, _please, _it's okay, you'll be fine…" The comforting words were nothing-they meant nothing to her, even uttered as panicked and desperate as they were. They didn't stop the burning, or the feeling that her body was riddled with bullet holes. Nothing she had ever experienced had hurt anything near this. Not one thing. Every breath that shook her ribcage felt as if air was made of a roaring blaze. She let tears leak from her eyes and felt a rough, calloused hand brush them away. It hurt for him to touch her- could he be using fire to burn her tears away? Riza clenched her teeth to try to stop her screams.

"Are you okay? Please be okay, please be okay… Don't die on me, dammit! Please don't be dying, just wait, I called an ambulance, it'll be here in a minute! I can't live without you, so DAMMIT, DON'T DIE ON ME!" His hands found hers, enveloping her fingers in fire. Usually his touch was so gentle. Why was he hurting her? This was Roy, her CO, her best friend, her childhood companion, her-

Riza's panicked thoughts faded as the pain overcame her, plaguing her long after she had succumbed to darkness once again.

~**~Break~**~

Roy could only watch and wait as Riza lay on the floor, shaking and screaming, her body thrashing and arching so high that it threatened to snap. He would kill anyone to make her pain stop, point his gloves at anything in the world for her screaming tears to cease flowing from her tortured eyes. If he could, he would take the pain himself just so she didn't have to endure it. It was his fault she had to go through the pain the military inflicted on her, his fault for Ishval, his fault for burning her. Maybe this was his fault too- with everything she had followed him through, he wouldn't be surprised if it was. _Just please, Riza, don't die on me._ He would do anything to stop her pain.

As it was, all he could do was wait for the ambulance to come, screaming her name and hoping in vain that she could hear him. That realization made Roy want to shed tears along with Riza- he was useless just when she needed him most, and when he had sworn not to be useless to her ever again.

**1,570 words. Dang. I guess it's just about my word goal. Chapter one successfully crossed off! YAY PROGRESS! **


	2. Reassurance

**Chapter two, and I'm behind schedule already… Heh. Like WAY behind schedule.**

**For my High School fans: I'm working on the next chapter, but I'm trying to end the whole Fuu drama, and it's difficult. This story is so much more INTERESTING… But the next chapters in High School will be very crack-tastic, containing Bradley going all psycho and spiking melons, and Fuery eating one… Well, let's just say it's not going to be very serious. XD**

**Most chapters won't have a theme song, but this one's is "Everybody's Fool" by Evanescence. **

"Yes, thank you. I'll be in touch as soon as we finish. Yes. He'll be out of surgery in an hour. Thank you. Goodbye." Roy watched the blonde nurse hang up the phone and turn to him. "May I help you, sir?"

"Do you know the condition of Riza Hawkeye?" he asked, his eyes worried.

"I'm sorry sir, but we've run numerous tests and there's nothing wrong with her physical body at all. She's perfectly okay…" Roy stared at the blonde nurse standing before him in shock

"You're telling me that pain I saw her go through is made up?" he yelled, clasping her shoulders, his eyes wide and scared. She slipped out of his crushing grasp, massaging her shoulder with a delicate white hand, her eyes as wide as saucers.

"That's the conclusion we came to, sir," she gasped. "We fear her mind may be… losing…"

"SHUT UP!" he roared at her, clenching his fists. "SHUT UP!"

"I'm sorry! It's just what the doctors think! We have no other leads, please sir, I'm sorry!" she pleaded, shielding her face from his wrath. As her blue eyes vanished from his sight, the boyish haircut startled him out of his rage. For an instant, she was a young, innocent version of Riza, shielding herself from her father's angry blows. He faltered- he couldn't hurt Riza. He could never hurt Riza.

Roy sank to his knees, temper replaced by concern and self-accusing anger. He curled his fingers into a threatening fist and slammed it against the tile floor. "Do you think she'll be all right?" he asked desperately, looking pleadingly up at the nurse.

She shrank back, not willing to be the bearer of bad news, her blue eyes wide with pity. "I'm afraid you'll have to let the doctors tell you that, sir. I'm not sure I know the answer." He cradled his head in his palm, cursing softly. "I wouldn't…I wouldn't give up hope though, sir," he heard her say, patting him gently on the back. He looked up at her. "You've seen so much, sir. You can't give up hope now."

"How can you, who see death every day, say something like that? Why should you hope?" he asked, breathing shakily.

"I may have seen death, sir, and I do see suffering. But I also see miracles, and that's what keeps me going. Everyone can have a miracle, but you can't have miracles without hope." Roy felt the corners of his mouth tug up, but swallowed the smile.

"You're right miss…"

"Green. Maya Green," she said, plastering on the smile most nurses wore on duty and offering her hand.

"Miss Green," he paused and took it, standing up, now looking down at the petite blue-eyed blonde clad in starched white. "Do you think that I…could see her?" he asked, sounding more like a little boy terrified of his own shadow than a decorated war hero. Maya tucked a strand of short hair behind her ear.

"She's asleep," she said uncertainly. "She won't be able to talk to you…"

"I know." Roy smiled this time- the first time since he had received the terrifying phone call in the middle of the night.

"We could do that," she said softly.

"Thank you."

~**~Break~**~

Riza's pain had faded to a low, dull throb that threatened to spike at any moment. She stared up at the ceiling of the hospital, trying to forget everything. She tried to do anything but feel and wallow in a deep pit of fear and succumb to the dark depths of her terrified mind.

"Hawkeye! You're awake!" her breath caught in her throat as oxygen turned to fire again. She hated this. _Hated _this. She wanted it to stop. It couldn't be that she wasn't in Hell if it felt like magma pouring down her skin every second she was exposed to the outside. Riza couldn't be alive- was this the hell allotted to her?

"Hawkeye!" she heard through the screaming pain. "Hawkeye, can you hear me?" Perhaps Hell was merciful, allowing Riza what had kept her on Earth for so long. She reached her hand out blindly, seeking the reassuring touch that hurt so much. A strong, calloused hand again met her own, and though she withered, Riza only gripped his hand tighter, clinging to the last comfort in her world. She grit her teeth and dared herself to let go- she had waited so long for his touch, and she wanted the pain it gave her. Flames licked their way up her arm- was Roy burning her again? She never asked, he wouldn't, he wouldn't, he wouldn't…

~**Break**~

Riza jerked upright in the hospital bed, shaking in a cold sweat. The pain was gone.

_Finally. _

"Hawkeye?" she heard a timid voice ask as she looked down to find Roy's hand still entwined in her own.

"You didn't need to do this, sir. I'm fine," she didn't believe a word she said, but she was strong, she could handle it, she could deal with the pain herself. He didn't need to worry about her.

"No, you're not. Do you have any idea how much that scared me?" Riza shook her head, both annoyed and relieved that he saw through her lies. "A lot, that's how much. More than a lot, actually- you scared me half to death." Her hand was still clenched in his, and he showed no signs of letting go. She didn't want him to, preferring to keep their hands entwined forever, keeping him by her side.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, her eyes blinking in and out of focus.

He brushed a stray blonde wisp from in front of her eyes. "It's alright, you have nothing to apologize for. I'm right here, and I'm not going to leave, Hawkeye," he muttered. She turned away, trying to hold back her tears. A silence enveloped them, seeming to hold Roy's very breath back to keep the suppressing hush in play. "They…They don't know what caused it," he said finally, his hand still rubbing slow, calming circles in her palm. "No one knows." Another long silence began to suffocate them.

"I'm scared," she finally admitted.

"We all are, Hawkeye. I'm scared too. But you'll be fine. They'll find out what you have, and there'll be a cure and you'll be _fine." _Riza was not reassured by the tone in his voice- it was the tone he used when he could barely hope himself. It was the tone he used when his hope was forced on himself. (She knew the tone well. It was the voice he had during the entirety of Ishval, and it would take death for her to forget it.)

"I'll be fine," she repeated, mimicking his tone without mocking it.

"Sir, I hate to interrupt, but we've searched the records and we think we've found something," Roy and Riza's heads jerked up from their trance. It was Maya, nervous and timid, scared to break the sacred silence but feeling like her sense of duty called for it. "It was a long time ago, but a young woman named Trisha Elric had a very similar case. She was a only few years younger than Lieutenant Hawkeye. There are no more cases, and the records are very limited- country doctors don't write down much in the way of observations, it's always been a fault of theirs- but from the little we've analyzed, the illnesses are very similar." Riza's hand in his grip stiffened and her steady hands, so reliable and firm, began to shake. Roy clasped them tighter, as if his own trembling hands could calm the spasms that shuddered through her delicate fingers.

"Trisha Elric? She lived in Resembool, right?" he asked, scared to hear the answer.

"Yes. She had two young sons- one was the Fullmetal Alchemist. There's one more thing, sir…" Maya wrung her hands, scared to yet again be the bearer of bad news.

"…She's dead. We know." Riza said, expressionless.

"Oh, you know…" Maya's voice trailed off. "Trisha also contracted tuberculosis, though, and we can't tell if she died of that or..." she began to chew her lip.

"Thank you." Riza forced out. Maya nodded and shrank back into the hallway, wisely retreating.

"Trisha Elric. Small world, huh?" Roy spat bitterly.

"You need to go home, sir," Riza said, turning away from Roy and shrugging her hand out of his grasp. "How long have I been here?" she asked next, still avoiding his pleading gaze.

"A few days," he answered.

"How long have you been here?"

"…A few days," he admitted after a second of awkward silence.

"Go home, sir. I'll be _fine._" she hissed, still turned away.

"I don't...but…please…no…" he stammered.

"Visiting hours are almost over anyway, sir," her voice was different than normal, high and cold instead of the warm and firm he usually heard in her tone. A million thoughts ran through his head, each vying for the spotlight in the center. There were only two things he was absolutely sure of.

_Riza was trying to push him away. She was scared-terrified-and didn't want to show him weakness._

_He didn't like it one bit. He wanted her closer, not farther away, and she was pushing him that way. _

He gave in, scraping his chair back and backing slowly out of the dimly lit hospital room, "All right, lieutenant. I'll be back in the morning."

"Don't bother, sir. You need to work." she said curtly.

"I'm going to visit whether you like it or not, Hawkeye," he retorted, running a hand through his messy dark hair. He heard her sigh. "And one last thing, Hawkeye."

"Yes sir? What is it?"

"Don't die. That's an order, lieutenant, and I expect you to obey it. There'll be hell to pay otherwise," her head turned a fraction. Her long blonde hair rippled over her shoulders, somehow still lush when the rest of her was beaten and gray. He left without another word, leaving her to her demand.

Riza sank back into the multitude of hard pillows, unsuccessfully attempting to hold back the hot tears and choking sobs that shook her frame.

_She wanted him there, that was certain, but her stubborn pride would not allow it. He had to read her mind- he had done it before, right? _

**1,711 words. Review! **

**oh, and this is sunarose. I'm the beta fairy. muahahahahaha. :D also review!**


	3. Terror

**Yo! So thanks to the end of the semester, I was super busy this week! Luckily, all I had to do was send this in for beta (thank you, sunaroseeee) and I have the rough of chapter four typed. High School is encountering minor setbacks, so be patient. **

**I forgot to mention- this is slightly AU, as if everything happened but Falman stayed with the team and Havoc recovered insanely fast. About six months after the promised day, as an estimate. **

Ed was not expecting a phone call. You never truly expect a phone call (and when you do, they never seem to call, leaving you in a terrible feeling of suspense and disappointment), but a phone call at six am as he was stuffing his face with oatmeal was another thing entirely.

"Ed, slow down. You aren't supposed to be at Mrs. Dalton's until seven!" Winry complained, stirring her own oatmeal unappetizingly. It had sounded like such a good idea twenty minutes ago until Ed had drooled into the pot as it bubbled merrily on the stove.

"But iffs so goo', Wiry!" he spattered around a mouthful of piping hot mash.

"Ed! At least swallow before you-" Winry was interrupted by the ring of the phone. She pushed away from the table and its sloppy inhabitant and covered the short distance to the phone before its third ring.

"Elric-Rockbell residence. This is Winry speaking." She answered professionally, expecting one of her customers sobbing about how they broke their leg, or their arm, or their foot…

"Hello, Miss Rockbell. This is Second Lieutenant Breda. I hope I'm not interrupting anything- could I speak with Fullmetal?" Winry's eyes widened a bit.

"Ah, of course, give me one second." She put her hand over the receiver and beckoned Ed, his cheeks crammed with oatmeal. "Ed, it's Breda, swallow that godforsaken oatmeal!" She yelled, smacking him on the head. After a moment of Ed standing motionless right next to her, he spewed the oatmeal right onto Winry.

"Eek! Ed, that's GROSS!"

"Sorry! Sorry! Winry, you okay?" he fussed, hurriedly wiping the offensive, spit-sodden mash off of her face.

"Other than being COVERED in this disgusting stuff, I'm FINE." Winry huffed, batting his hand away and handing Ed the phone. Ed winced and wiped a chunk off of the handle as Winry marched from the room, muttering curses.

"Fullmetal? You done arguing with your girlfriend, big guy?" Breda asked impatiently.

"I think. Why're you calling? And stop calling me Fullmetal, Breda."

"If I stop calling you Fullmetal, you have to call me Second Lieutenant Breda." Ed massaged his temple.

"Fine, Fullmetal it is,"

"Anyway, I know you aren't part of the military anymore, but I figured that you should be the first civilian notified," Breda paused and sucked in a deep breath. "Hawkeye's sick."

"You've got to be kidding me, Breda. Hawkeye? Sick? That's no big deal."

"I'm serious, Fullmetal. She's in the hospital - has been for four days. Mustang hasn't been into work yet, and I saw one of her attacks when I visited. They're terrifying." Ed sucked in a breath.

"At least the bastard cares about something," he muttered.

"You'd be surprised, Fullmetal. The chief has a lot of faces- you got the arrogant womanizer, but around Hawkeye like this he's totally different- gentle, caring, quiet and the like. Don't write him off, Fullmetal. He's human, just like the rest of us." Ed sighed.

"But Hawkeye? Sick like that?"

"It's bad, Fullmetal." There was silence on the line. "Good morning, Colonel. I'm talking to Fullmetal. Would you like to…?"

Hawkeye? Sick? Images of the kind, strict blonde lieutenant flickered past his mind. Nothing could hurt Hawkeye, especially not illness.

"I'm handing you over to the Colonel, Ed."

"Thanks Breda." Ed murmured, distracted.

"No problem."

"Hello, Fullmetal," he heard, and nearly fell over in astonishment. This couldn't be the Mustang he knew. The voice was so worn down and defeated… Even blind, he had never sounded this hopeless.

"Mustang… Is it bad?" He heard a crackle of static on the other line that must have been a sigh.

"She's getting cold, Fullmetal."

"WHAT?" Ed forced himself to keep down the bile rising in his throat. Hawkeye, strong, steady, caring, kind, gentle Hawkeye…

"She's not dead. Hawkeye has a defense mechanism when she gets scared- she changes. She… She pushes everyone away, trying to kid herself into believing that she can overcome it on her own because no one seems to care."

"Oh." Ed felt the pit in his stomach settle and he was able to breathe again, though just barely.

"They couldn't find a diagnosis, either, until yesterday," he stopped again, his voice trailing off into the air. "Now that they have, I wish they didn't."

"Why? What is it, Mustang? Is she going to…"

"She has your mother's disease." Ed dropped the phone and fell to his knees, his face white. Again he felt like throwing up, and resisted the urge to collapse further.

When he had steadied his breathing, Ed picked up the phone again, his voice hurried and rushed. "We're coming, Mustang. We'll catch the next train to Eastern."

"I had a feeling you might say that, Fullmetal. I'll tell her," Mustang's voice was grim. "Goodbye. I'll see you soon." The line went dead, and Ed didn't hang up. His mind swimming with his mother and Hawkeye, Ed could barely breathe, let alone stand up. The memories seemed to meld together- now his mother was in a uniform, and Hawkeye was holding Al as a baby, softly singing a lullaby. After a few minutes, he couldn't remember which one was his mother. Did he have two? It became impossible to distinguish between them, every aspect of each woman mingling and fusing until…

"Ed!" he heard Winry shout, startling him out of the shaky stupor. "Ed, what is it? Are you alright? Ed!"

"Winry, pack your bag, alright? We're visiting the East," he mumbled.

"Why? Ed, what's wrong? You look sick."

"I hope not, Winry," was all he could say. "I hope not."

~*~Break~*~

"Go home, Mustang." Havoc said, wagging an unlit cigarette. "We can handle it here."

"No." Roy growled.

"Colonel, please. You haven't been home in three days." Fuery piped up from his desk.

"I don't need to go home." He snapped at the young sergeant.

"Look, just because Hawkeye's sick, it doesn't mean you should give up like this. Take a good long look at yourself, Mustang. Do you really think Hawkeye wants you to be like this?"

"She won't care."

"I beg to differ, Chief. You're going to get one hell of a chewing out when she gets back."

"She hates me anyway, Havoc." Breda had never seen the Colonel so hopeless. His dark eyes lacked every emotion but guilt, his uniform was wrinkled and stained, and even his hair was limp and messy. Roy Mustang was a mess without Riza Hawkeye.

"That's the sleep deprivation talking, Mustang," Havoc said angrily, marching over to his desk and smacking the despondent colonel. "Hawkeye wouldn't spend half her life following you if she hated you, damn it!" Mustang looked up at Havoc with dead eyes.

"She's loyal, Havoc. Too loyal for me to deserve. She has to hate me for constantly putting her in danger and nearly killing her, and now her having these attacks. I'm right next to her, Havoc. I'm right next to her and she's in pain and she could very damn well be dying! I'm useless! How can she not hate me for that?" The entire team hefted a gigantic sigh.

"Oh, just shut up and go to sleep," Breda muttered. "You need it. You always get depressed when you're tired."

"She told me to go to work. I need to listen to her. I owe Riza that much." The heads in the office swiveled to Mustang. "Get to work. She'll be back soon, and she'll want at least some paperwork done."

_There was no doubt Colonel Roy Mustang was broken. _

~*Break*~

"Brother, what's going on?" Al asked Ed. Ed was furiously jamming clothes into a suitcase, barely even glancing at them to make sure they were his.

"Lieutenant Hawkeye's sick, Al." He said, pausing on a shirt with a stain near a button and absentmindedly tracing the faint burgundy patch with a light touch.

"What? That's terrible!" Al rushed up to his brother, formerly sleepy eyes alert with distraught worry. "What does she have, brother?" Al glanced at the battered suitcase, sighed, and dumped it out, sorting through the clothes and folding them back into the suitcase.

"That's the problem. They think they have what Mom had, Al. Mustang couldn't even put on a happy face for me." Al's hand smoothing the wrinkles out of a pair of pants faltered.

"Are we going to lose Mom all over again? I don't know why, and it may seem silly to you, but I hold Hawkeye as a bit of a mom, ever since we met her. She's always been so kind, and strong, caring too. I don't think I can lose Mom twice, brother." Ed looked at his little brother. Al was near tears at this news- no surprise, Al had always been more emotional than him- and his eyes were big and scared.

"It not stupid, Al. When I heard the news, Mom and Hawkeye sort of merged into one person, and at one point I couldn't tell who was who. I don't think Hawkeye is going to die, Al. She knows that if she does, we'll either be helping Mustang with human transmutation or he'll have committed suicide after watching her eyes close for the last time. She can't die-she knows the consequences, and she's not going to leave Mustang like that."

"I think you're right, brother. I'll go pack." Al said solemnly, shuffling out of the room. Ed watched his brother and returned to shoving clothes in his packed suitcase. He didn't want his frightening words to be anything but passing fears, but the lump in his throat and the deep pit in his stomach told the world otherwise, warning of a day when his words would be true. Edward Elric was scared- more than scared, terrified. Completely and utterly terrified for the gentle blonde woman and her reliant commanding officer. In many respects it made sense to Ed that she was the bodyguard and he was the useless CO, but in others, he felt that it was Mustang who should be protecting Hawkeye because she was the one thing that tethered him to life.

**1,720 words. I really like the last paragraph. Review and tell me if you liked it too.**

_This is sunarose. I'm still the beta fairy. But not the flitty and annoying kind of fairy, the awesome, LEP kind of fairy. Yay for Artemis Fowl references! Peace!_


	4. Assurance

**So on Saturday I got fabric for my Mei Chang cosplay! 8D HAPPY. Then I lost my memorystick. (Yes, yes, I know, but I've had it since September, and this was the first time, so shussshhhhh!) **

**Therefore, with the added fact that I was still recuperating from two days of being absent, and I had a busy weekend full of fabric shopping, I HAVE AN EXCUSE to why this is so late. **

**High School is coming! I PROMISE! I hate myself for being this terrible about updating it… *crouches in Tamaki-corner* **

"Ed…" Winry muttered, looking sideways at the blonde teenager with tired eyes, "When is the train coming?"

"Fifteen minutes ago," he grimaced, glaring at the tracks like they were made of acid.

"Brother, do you think Granny will be okay?" Al asked Ed, sitting on his suitcase gloomily, his head in his hands.

"She'll be fine, Al. She'll be fine, but I can't say the same about the lieutenant," Ed muttered, patting his brother's back. Winry glanced at the brothers. Both of them had identical expressions on their faces, though Ed was trying to cover his- to a stranger, he would appear strong, but to Winry, Ed only looked scared. She took Ed's left hand in her right, her left in Al's right, and gave both of them a reassuring smile.

"Miss Riza's going to be fine," she whispered, squeezing their fingers until she cut off the circulation. Al winced, but Ed appeared not to notice and squeezed back. They watched the train pull up to the station, and it was only when they were halfway to East when Winry loosened the strangle hold on their hands, -and when she finally did in fear of the boys being embarrassed by her constant need of comfort, Ed and Al only squeezed tighter.

~*Break*~

Pinako Rockbell sat on the porch, slowly rocking back and forth in the old, creaky rocking chair carved by her son- nearly thirty years ago, now- and puffing on her pipe. There was an eerie sense of peace in Resembool today, as if the world had decided to take the day off and stay locked up in the little corner that it retreated to on such occasions. The only sounds were the gentle whistle of the wind and the rasp of the rocking chair.

She felt especially small today of all days, when again there was a person younger than herself dying. Pinako had never been especially fond of Riza Hawkeye, but she had pity for the woman. A few minutes with Riza Hawkeye had changed her granddaughter- the woman could move you deeply. Reserved and quiet, scarred but repentant for past mistakes, she was an individual that you would remember for all your days. Pinako had barely exchanged a greeting with her, and even in her advanced years she felt young and naïve next to the veteran of Ishval.

Urey and Sara came to mind next. Pinako loved her son still, years after his death- Sara as well, both of them gentle and caring, with a love of people and medicine. It was a pity they had died so young. Perhaps if they had survived to return they could have saved Trisha Elric.

Maybe if they had lived, they could save Riza Hawkeye right now. Sara and Urey would be with their daughter, on a train, headed to East to save a woman they barely knew for their daughter. They would have saved anyone's life to see their daughter smile, even a veteran of Ishval.

~*Break*~

The end of the work day was a relief to everyone in the office. There had been a constant tapping in HQ all day, and it had been courtesy of Roy Mustang's pen.

"Colonel. Go." Havoc muttered, twitching. Mustang looked up from his paperwork (despite his bold words and his attempt to concentrate, the team doubted that he had gotten through one sheet, considering that his stack was still as thick as when Fuery had timidly sat it down that morning) to see twilight just beginning to set in. He was out of the office before Breda had a chance to finish biting his sandwich.

"I'm calling Gracia now. She needs to know," Fuery declared, also rising. Falman, Havoc and Breda nodded. "Falman, what's her number?"

"I believe it is 425-736-9645, Sergeant Major." Falman stated. Fuery began to head towards the door. Halfway there he turned and looked back at Falman.

"Will you go dial it? I can't remember that."

~*Break*~

"Oh, _Roy," _Chris Mustang muttered upon discovering her foster son collapsed, his forehead pressed against the smooth counter of the bar. "What _am _I going to do with you?"

In response, her nephew grunted and buried his face deeper into his arms. Chris puffed out a breath, sending smoke in to mix with the already murky air. Lowering her eye level to the middle of his inky black head of hair, she again puffed on her cigarette. "You know, Roy-boy, drinking isn't good for you."

He raised his head just enough to stare at her with blank eyes, nursing the glass of alcohol as if it was his only comfort in the world. "Yes, Madame, but I am being a sociable man like I always am and visiting my lovely foster mother and many sisters," he muttered sarcastically, raising the auburn liquid to his lips.

"Sociable my ass, Roy Mustang," Chris countered, plucking the glass out of his clumsy fingers. "You never visit. Why the hell are you bothering to drown yourself in booze?"

"What, so I need a reason to visit you? I can't just pop in and say hello, having a small drink as I do?"

"Usually, yes. Roy, you're scaring the customers. How many have you had?" she demanded quietly, holding the glass just out of his lethargic grasp.

"On-t-a few, I guess," he shrugged, propping himself up with his elbows so he could make eye contact with his strict aunt.

"And the purpose you have for all this alcohol? Last time you got drunk was when Elizabeth got so scared. Would you care to enlighten an old spinster on your current situation?" he sighed heavily, focusing on the counter.

"She's sick. Elizabeth's sick, and she's not getting better," he muttered, raising his hand to smother lips to keep her silent before continuing. "She's not letting me help, either. I'm…I'm scared for her, Chris. I feel almost like I'm stuck in a downpour and she's not there to open an umbrella or hand me a pair of dry gloves. I can't help her, Chris. She's trying to be strong and I can't snap her out of it."

Chris grabbed her foster son and forced him to look her in the eyes. "You think that she wants to be strong, Roy? With Riza, you're going to have to physically take her up in her arms and comfort her, because otherwise she's going to write off your words as nothings. Just do it, Roy." His eyes lit up, losing their sleepy kind of indifference that they held when they were drinking his worries away. "Come on, let's get that alcohol out of your clothes. She isn't going to appreciate that."

~*Break*~

Roy arrived at the hospital in record time, bursting through the double doors a mere five minutes after he had put down his glass. A passing child, unfortunate enough to be a few feet from the entrance and quickly reduced to a crying wreck in her mother's arms, earning a glare from the woman sitting with the little girl in her arms. Obviously his speed was not admired by some. The alcohol had not helped his judgment, but having his head plunged in a bucket of ice water had certainly startled him out of his lethargic state.

"Sorry," he muttered, running a hand through his hair. The mother ignored him and turned back to her small child.

"It's all right Theresa, Mommy's got you, the man will be gone soon, okay?" she crooned, stroking the messy brown hair. Theresa sniffled and peeked one dark eye out of her mother's soothing embrace. Soon the other one followed. Under the child's watchful gaze, Roy collapsed into one of the chairs, rubbing his temples.

"Mister, it's not that bad," she said a minute later, cautiously approaching Roy. "You scared me, that's all." Roy looked at the little girl a foot away from his knee. He gave her an apologetic smile.

"Oh, don't worry. I've got a lot on my mind, that's all. I'm sorry for scaring you."

"Why're you here, Mister?" she asked, watching him with her large, almost black eyes. Her mother, five feet further away, shook her head and scooped up her daughter quickly.

"I'm sorry, Colonel. My daughter hasn't learned that curiosity kills the cat." She said sharply, trying to minimize conversation with the military man.

"No, it's alright. I really actually need to get my mind off of everything." The woman furrowed her brow, ruining her wrinkle-free complexion. It was obvious now to Roy that she was one of the people that was still wary of the military and its motives, and wasn't sure what to do with a dog like him.

"You can tell me things, Mister! I'm a good listener!" Theresa cried, her voice muffled by her mother's blouse. Roy smiled and stood up.

"I bet you are," he replied. Theresa poked her head out and grinned, the tear streaks still evident on her face but long forgotten by their bearer.

"That's what my Poppa says!" She declared, puffing out her chest proudly. "But you never answered my question!"

"Which one?" He teased, his mind temporarily relieved of the weight in his stomach by the happy little girl.

"Why're you here, mister?" She asked brightly. Roy felt the pit drop itself back into his gut, and his fingers again ran through his dark hair.

"Theresa, that's a very personal question. You have no right to ask it." Her mother lectured her.

"No, it's okay. I'm here because my best friend is very sick, and I'm visiting her." The mother turned her head up to look Roy in the eyes and smiled a bit, one corner of her mouth twitching up.

"Best friend?" She asked.

"Well, we aren't really allowed to be more than that," he admitted, now scratching the back of his neck. Theresa's mother chuckled.

"You're different than the rest of them," she murmured, letting her daughter down from the protective circle of her arms.

"The military is different than it was a few months ago. I promise there won't be any more revolutions in the near future. Our new Fuhrer used to be my commanding officer. He'll lead the country right, I know it."

"That's what we thought about Fuhrer Bradley too. I still don't trust the military."

"You have a full right to," he acknowledged. "But I hope that as time passes, you'll put more faith in it."

"Both of my brothers were killed in Ishval, Colonel. It will be a long time before I trust the military again. It was nice to meet you. I'm glad that at least you are not as much of a monster as people make you out to be."

Roy watched as Theresa ran up to a boy with a crutch and a cast on his left leg and eyes identical to hers. Her mother joined Theresa and gave each child a kiss on the forehead. _At least somebody gets a happy ending in this hospital._ He thought, contemplating the young mother's words.

~*Break*~

There was still ice in her voice as she spoke to Roy. "I thought I told you not to visit, Colonel Mustang."

"I'm not going to stop, Hawkeye, so get used to it," he retorted gruffly, trying to mask his relief at seeing Riza alive and calm, her body not raked by pain and suffering breaths. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, Colonel. You don't need to trouble yourself with my illness," she said curtly, raising her chin up and shaking her hair out of her face.

He grunted in response, shooting a glare at the blonde lieutenant in the hospital bed. "Hawkeye, if you're going to be such a bitch, then I'll stop caring." They were downright lies, meant to startle her out of the stiff, formal shell she had retreated to, but they did nothing but make her jerk her chin higher in the air and make her utter a tiny _hmph._

"Well, Colonel, why don't you? You obviously don't care about me, sir, so why waste your time here?" Too far. He had gone too far. There was no way that the ice in her eyes would melt now. He resisted the overwhelming urge to bang his head against the nearest wall in punishment for his stupidity.

"I'm not going to do that, Hawkeye," he muttered, meeting her icy glare. "You matter to me, and I'm going to be right here, no matter what."

She bit her bottom lip, auburn eyes flashing first with relief, then with contempt. "I'm not a baby, sir," she spat, turning away from him yet again. "I can take care of myself."

"Hawkeye, STOP IT!" he yelled, forcing her eyes to meet his gaze before continuing in a low, dangerous tone. "If you want to give up like this and be abandoned by everyone who cares, then FINE, but you've watched my back too long for me to abandon you! I don't care what's wrong with you, but I'm NOT going to leave you!"

"There's no need to care about me, you IDIOT! I'll be fine, so there's no need to concern yourself with this. You have goals, Colonel. I'm an obstacle."

Roy clenched his teeth, trying to refrain from ripping his hair out in frustration. "You will never be an obstacle," he muttered quietly, his voice incapable of anything louder than a whisper. Why did she think so lowly of herself? Wasn't it damn obvious that he _needed_ her like he needed oxygen? Why didn't she just accept that? He wrung his hands, staring at the scarred palms with onyx eyes.

Glancing up, he saw a look of utter shock on her face. Really she looked closer to tears than anything else- the cold was gone, as was the anger. "Never," he repeated, looking into her eyes this time. Remembering his foster mother's words-_just do it-_he embraced her, hugging his lieutenant tightly. He felt her shudder as the tension in her body relaxed and she finally came out of the broken shell, soaking his shirt with tears. Roy didn't mind. The tears were proof that she was still Riza, and that was plenty to give him a ray of hope for the future.

**2,380** ***cough* So there you go. Sunarose is still the beta fairy. REMEMBER THAT. Good. Now go read Seven Months.**


	5. Trepidation

**Shortnsweet615 was a preliminary beta fairy. Go applaud her.**

Gracia Hughes was no stranger to loss.

In truth, she was an unlucky soul when it came to people she cared about, though Gracia herself would never admit it. She had lost her father as a young child, and threeof her grandparents before the age of twelve. Her sister had died in a train crash when Gracia was fourteen on her way home from visiting theirolder brother in Creta. She had met Maes when she was sixteen, when he visited a flower shop she had worked in. He had been buying flowers for his mother's grave - white chrysanthemums, she remembered. The choice made sense - in Amestris, they represented truth, but his mother had been Cretan, and in Creta they were for death.

They had quickly become friends and she had been falling for him, hard and fast, just as the time came that he graduated from the academy and was shipped off to Ishval. The next fewyears had been hell. Gracia remembered crying herself to sleep every night for the first two weeks Maes had been in Ishval. She had heard so many stories from friends and the friends of friends that she had beenalmost positive Maes was going to die.

When he had come back, weathered and beaten with a haunted look in his eyes (he tried to hide it, he attempted to smile, but she knew him and knew his habits. He wasn't hiding anything), she had still been afraid - even though he was home. Maes was a military man, after all, and he could die any day.

When Riza had caught Roy with the gun in his hand, Gracia had been hopeless. Roy was not Maes, but surely they had seen the same things. Surely Maes was suffering too…

She had gotten him to talk, just like Riza and Roy had collapsed into each other's arms, sobbing their hearts out. (Or, as they had delicately put it, "It had been raining".) There were many times when the four switched around a bit, like when Maes and Roy had hatched the scheme to finally put a ring on Gracia's finger, or the day she had discovered she was pregnant with Elysia and immediately went to Riza.

The father was, always, the last one to discover, as Maes had been. It had taken Gracia three days to finally tell him. He had whooped so loud with joy that the people two floors above them had come down, inquiring the cause of the happy exclamations.

Elysia had been born. Her last grandparent (Grandmother, on her father's side) had passed away hours after cooing over her newborn great-granddaughter.

There had been more deaths, too. Comrades of Maes, Roy and Riza. Her childhood friend. Riza and Roy had been forced to abandon even theirclose friendship as Roy discovered more and more about the high command. Somehow, during this time, Gracia found herself happy.

Elysia had grown and she had met the Elrics, immediately assuming a position as part of their support. (Not that they really needed it - Roy and Riza were practically Ed and Al's mother and father, despite Roy's attitude and Ed's scathing remarks.)

Then Maes had died.

That had torn her world apart. She would have died herself if she did not have Elysia. Elysia was her one ray of light in a life that had lost so many souls. Gracia was an optimist-to go through losing everyone close to her but her mother, brother, and daughter had made it necessary to survive.

Her optimism was finally stumbling, though. At the idea of losing Riza, (and, in effect, Roy, because everyone with half a brain could see that she was the only thing that kept him alive) she was almost too scared to visit.

"Mama?" Elysia asked, interrupting her mother's thoughts.

"Yes, Elysia? What is it, baby?" Gracia inquired, smiling through her musings.

"Are you sad? You look sad, Mama."

"It's nothing, sweetheart. I'm fine," Gracia gave the little girl a kiss on the crown of her head and tried to change the subject. "What's your drawing about, Elysia?"

The five-year-old, all concerns forgotten at the mention of her crayon masterpiece, snatched it and held it inches from Gracia's nose. "It's for Auntie Riza!" she explained happily, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Really? Why are there two people, Elysia? That one's Auntie Riza, right? Who's the other one?" It confused Gracia only mildly to see the two blobs with happy smiles on their simple faces and a rainbow of colors in the background. One blob had what seemed like electrified blonde hair, and the other had an afro of black at least as big as their head.

"That's Uncle Roy, Mama! You're being silly!" Elysia pouted, withdrawing her doodles from what she deemed an unworthy eye.

"Oh, that _was _silly of me!" Gracia exclaimed, bringing her hands up to her mouth in dramatic horror. "Of course that was Uncle Roy! Why's he there, Elysia, and not you?"

"Because this picture is to make Auntie Riza happy! You and me are there too, right here!" Elysia displayed her drawing yet again, pointing out two purple happy faces in a corner. "But Auntie Riza and Uncle Roy love each other lots! Lots and lots and lots!" she finished in a singsong voice with a barely concealed giggle. Gracia chuckled as well, nodding her head at the observations of the five year old.

"That's right, Elysia. Uncle Roy and Auntie Riza love each other very much." Gracia stated, scooping up her daughter and placing her in her lap, hugging Elysia tightly. Elysia turned and gently placed her small hand on her mother's cheek.

"Mama, if they love each other, why don't they get married?" Elysia asked, her innocent eyes curious and wide with confusion.

"Well, Elysia, you see…" Gracia faltered, unsure of how to explain the complicated relationship to the little girl. "Uncle Roy and Auntie Riza had to bring down the bad guys, remember? If the bad guys had known that Auntie Riza and Uncle Roy loved each other, they might have hurt Auntie Riza."

"That's mean…" Elysia said softly, looking down at her mother's hand. "But the bad guys are gone now, right Mama? Uncle Roy and Auntie Riza can get married!"

"I'm sure it'll happen soon, Elysia. We have to be patient, okay?"

"Okay…" Elysia said uncertainly, tugging on one of her pigtails hesitantly. "Mama, did you love Daddy?"

Gracia blinked the traitorous tears out of her eyes before answering in a whisper. "Yes, Elysia. I loved him very much."

~*Break*~

It took a lot for Edward Elric to cry. There were many instances where and when he felt like crying but could not muster up the tears, and some (very few) where he would cry and feel no sadness at all.

Al was crying.

Winry was crying.

Ed wasn't. Not yet. He was watching his brother and his closest friend silently stand, tears gathering in their eyes and heroically running down their cheeks as Riza Hawkeye screamed. This was no time for loud, sniffling sobs. The silence in the room unnerved Ed, the only real sounds being the screams of Riza and the hopeless reassurances of Roy Mustang, who was clutching her hands (crushing more than anything else, but Ed doubted that was the first thing on either of their minds) and standing closer than anyone else, even the doctors and nurses.

He hadn't remembered his mother ever really screaming like that. No, his mother had never shrieked like Riza was now. Could it still be his mother's disease, even if the symptoms were different?

Then again, he had been so young. Maybe he had blocked out the screams, or attributed them to nightmares.

Her screams died gradually, and then she was sobbing into Roy's uniform and mumbling quiet pleas. The rest of the room (even the other patient, an elderly woman that couldn't be less than eighty) was still completely silent.

"I'm sorry…" Riza choked, her voice muffled by the heavy wool. Ed watched as Roy clutched Riza closer, shushing her by rocking the lieutenant back and forth gently. It amazed Ed to see this side of the arrogant Colonel he had served under for so long. Breda was right-Mustang had so many faces. This was one of his better ones.

"It's okay, it's just an illness, remember? You'll be fine soon, we'll all be fine soon." She nodded, breathing in deeply before pulling her face away and drying her tears. Everybody pretended not to notice the wet spot on Roy's jacket and the puffy redness of Riza's eyes.

"I'm being stupid, aren't I?" she smiled sadly, looking down at her hands. "You shouldn't be here, you really don't need to be. I'll be fine, really I will."

Al's lip trembled. "Lieutenant!" he blurted. "Please be all right! I don't like it when you're suffering like this..."

Riza looked at the sensitive teenage boy in remorse. "I'll be fine, Alphonse. Weren't you and Edward going to go traveling?"

Alphonse chewed his lip. "I just got out of the hospital, Lieutenant. I really don't think I'm up to crossing a desert."

"Just Riza is fine, Alphonse. You're not in the military."

Roy scoffed, folding his arms across his chest. "So I have to call you Lieutenant, do I?"

Riza laughed, a welcome reprieve in the heavy atmosphere of the hospital room. "You are my commanding officer, after all…" she said lightly, teasing him. There was a wide exhale of relief in the room. Riza was still Riza, and even though she was in pain, she was not deterred by the fact that she could very well be dead at any time.

It was what had happened to Trisha, after all.

~*Break*~

"Are…Are all her attacks like that, Second Lieutenant?" Al asked Havoc later as he picked at his food in the cafeteria.

Havoc nodded and stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth. "Scary, isn't it? Last week she was perfectly fine. She has one attack like that every one or two days, and most of the time the chief says she mentions aches and more minor pain," he pushed his wheelchair back from the table. "Well, Al, I have to go to physical therapy, so I'll be off."

"But I thought Colonel Mustang helped with the Philosopher's Stone," Al asked, furrowing his brow. "Why do you need physical therapy?"

"I haven't walked in a long while. My muscles and nerves and stuff might be connected again, but my body's forgotten how to use them or something. Ask Breda or Falman-I really don't know." Havoc shrugged and began to wheel away.

Al quickly scraped his chair back and scrambled to catch up with the rolling lieutenant. "But Lieutenant Havoc, don't you have to be fit for combat to be in the military?"

Havoc shrugged and continued to wheel toward the door. "Mustang pulled some strings and got me back in on 'temporary injury', so I'm removed from active combat until I recover."

"Are you happy, Lieutenant?"

Havoc smiled. "For the most part. It was better before Hawkeye got in here-now everyone's so worried about her that there hasn't been anything done at all. Poor Fuery brought Hayate into the office because he doesn't want to leave him alone, and the Colonel takes him home when he _does _go home, which happened to be three days ago as far as I know."

"Is the Colonel really that protective?" Al asked in amazement. Sure, he had seen the way he acted in the hospital and the dark circles under his eyes, but Al had assumed that it was stress and mild concern, not the fact that he hadn't been home in _three days_. Mustang with Lieutenant Hawkeye was as bad as Ed with Winry.

"You saw him with your own eyes,Al. Answer it yourself."

~*Break*~

The loud sobs and shuddering breaths had descended upon Winry shortly after Riza fell asleep. Roy had not noticed, instead collapsing into a nearby chair and quickly dozing off himself, but Ed had quickly moved her into the hallway.

"Shh, Winry, it's okay," he muttered. "You're such a crybaby. You heard the lieutenant, it's just an illness. You don't need to worry." He wiped the tears away gently, even though his voice was gruff.

She continued to cry, but this time she wiped the tears away herself. "You're right, Ed. Why is it, though, that all I can do is cry? You're not crying, but it's all I can do to…" She sniffled. Ed sighed and ran a hand through her hair.

"You have to cry for me. Remember, Winry? You said that's what you do. It's okay to cry. You're not any less strong." He paused, watching the golden strands of hair slip through his fingers. "You aren't trying to pretend, at least. It's really all I'm doing, Winry. I feel just like you do."

"Ed…" Winry clutched Ed's wrinkled black shirt and pressed her face into his shoulder. "I just feel so damn weak…" she muttered.

His voice was soft and low as he spoke again. "I know, Winry. I know."

~*Break*~

"My lady, if I am allowed to speak my opinion, I believe you should call. It does very little to stare at the phone like that."

Mei scowled at the innocent telephone, tugging at the collar of her dress in the process. "I understand, Min, but I'm really nervous! What if Alphonse doesn't want to talk to me? What if he's died? What if I dial the wrong number?" Her frantic questions proved too much for the tiny Xingese servant to stand nobly and quietly. Min had practically raised Mei, and she did _not _do well when Mei began to ramble.

"My lady, you're doing it again. Haven't I told you so many times-a mouth that runs away with its words will get the owner in trouble?"

Mei's hands flew to her mouth as she silenced herself.

"That's much better, princess. Now, I believe you need to make a phone call?" questioned Min once again, approaching the young princess to fix one of her many braids. "Your hair would be much prettier if you kept it down, princess. You may even be able to find a suitor that way."

Mei grimaced, her nose scrunching up with distaste. "I wish you'd stop that, Min. I have Alphonse, you forget that all the time! He really is such a gentleman…"

Min sighed and slipped the little beads back onto the ends of the braid. "Yes, my lady. I'm sure he is."

Mei whipped around, accidently whipping Min in the face several times with her braids. Holding her eye, Min chuckled. "I don't understand why you need alkahestry**, **princess. Those braids are formidable weapons."

"Oh, Min, I'm sorry! Are you okay?"

"Do not concern yourself with the well-being of a servant, princess. We hinder you when you are kind. Kindness leads to laziness, and when someone is lazy nothing gets done."

Mei frowned again, unhappy with the protests and lessons of the woman she considered a mother. "I'll be nice if I want to be, Min."

"It is not wise, princess."

"I don't care!"

Min sighed yet again. "You are infuriating, princess."

Mei grinned this time, embracing the older woman tightly. "I know Min, but you really shouldn't complain. It isthe way you brought me up."

The servant returned the hug, allowing herself a small smile. "It is the nature of those of the Chang clan to be generous and stubborn, princess. It is a small wonder we are so poor."

"Well, at least in the Chang clan we don't treat servants like they do here. I wondered by the way nobles talked to them if they were deaf and dumb."

"Yes, princess. You're stalling again." Min pulled away from the embrace and placed her hands on her hips. Mei's grin turned into a sheepish smile and she made her way back to the telephone. Chewing her lip, she hesitantly curled her fingers around it and shakily began to dial the phone number she had memorized the first day she had received the letter from Alphonse Elric.

**So there we go. Five chapters, ten more to go. Wheee, from here on starts the angst and the fluff! Oh, and it's not JUST fluff. It's fluffyflufffluff. XD **

**So I'm dropping a day of tutoring, thanks to some lousy grades starting off the semester. Science and simplifying radicals confuse the heck out of me. XP **

**But anyway, yea. 3 you guys! **

**Sunarose was the final beta fairy on this, the lovely lass she is. Go read Seven Months and yell at her to update… or else…**


	6. Encouragement

The house was quiet as the ear-shattering ring of the telephone made Pinako jolt out of her light doze. She didn't have any appointments until three - it was barely one o'clock now. Perhaps someone was going to cancel? Usually cancellations were accepted, but the silence since Ed, Al and Winry had left for East City was too much the rugged old-timer.

"Hello? Rockbell-Elric residence. This is Pinako speaking." Pinako said, biting back a gigantic yawn.

"Oh, hello! My name is Mei Chang, Miss Pinako, and I was wondering if I could talk to Alphonse. I'm sorry if this is a bad time…"

Pinako chuckled. The slightly musical Xingese lilt the caller's voice possessed and the nervous energy that Pinako could almost feel through the phone would have been plenty to guess who the telephone call was from. It didn't hurt, either, that Al talked about the princess whenever he had a spare moment. "No, it's perfectly all right, Miss Mei. Al talks very highly of you, though I'm afraid he's in East City at the moment."

"Oh. Wh…When will he be back?"

"I'm not quite sure, but I'll be sure to give him your number. He'll be delighted to talk to you."

"Do you really think so? Oh, that's wonderful! Thank you, Miss Pinako! The number is…Oh, give me one minute, I wrote it down somewhere…"

"Take your time. I'm in no hurry." Pinako herself took a moment to hunt out a pen and a scrap of paper. Once Mei had read the number several times, the Xingese princess continued to talk.

"…And please tell Alphonse that he can call whenever he likes, too, because I'll always be here! Thank you, Miss Pinako! Goodbye!"

"You're welcome, Miss Mei. It was a pleasure." Pinako chuckled as the line went dead. Mei seemed a very happy-go-lucky sort of person. No wonder Al was so fond of her.

~*Break*~

"Do you think it's wise? It's obvious that we can do nothing to help her. The single time we've been able to give her pain medication, it has helped, but her attacks come on too suddenly and too violently to keep up with."The doctor looked at his colleague hopelessly.

Dr. Marx, a neurologist, sipped tea nearby. "Truly? I'm curious, gentlemen. What do you think she has?"

The first doctor shrugged and stared into his coffee. "It's almost like some severe, mutated form of neuralgia. She experiences what I've diagnosed as nerve pain – shooting, stabbing, burning – and it's all over her body. Sometimes it's so severe she blacks out."

"Too severe for medication?"

"Yes. She thrashes around – the only person who has successfully stopped her spasms is her superior, Colonel Mustang. He's here now, actually. Rarely ever leaves."

"So he's the lovebird I've been hearing about? I've got money on them."

"Don't we all?" The doctors laughed heartily, attempting to mask their concerns. It was hard not to grow fond of the blonde lieutenant, and they had seen too much death.

Far too much.

~*Break*~

"Wanshang hao-…" Al looked up at the ceiling, hoping that the voice would cease chattering soon so he could explain that he did not speak Xingese. Before hearing the unfamiliar language, he hadn't realized how long distance the phone call really was.

He chewed his lip nervously as the voice continued to ramble. "Excuse me, I'm sorry, but I don't speak Xingese," he finally blurted after a few more minutes of listening. The voice stopped abruptly, the sudden silence unnerving Al. Seconds later, he heard muffled yelling and the sound of commotion.

"Who you be? Name please!" Al breathed a sigh of relief. It was Amestrian, and he could work with that.

"My name is Alphonse Elric, and I-" he was cut off as the voice yelped happily.

"You are Elric, yes? Princess talk about you! We will get her, she will be happy!" Al smiled brightly – he had hoped she would be happy to speak with him. There was more yelling in the background, and the sounds of scuffling static filled Al's ears. He bit his lip again, wondering how long this would take.

~*Break*~

"Princess! He's called – he's on the phone now! Ping talked to him, hurry my lady, get up!" cried Min frantically, yanking back the many blankets that protected Mei from the chilly autumn air. The princess jolted awake and flailed desperately for a second before falling onto the floor.

"Make sure he doesn't hang up, Min! I'm coming, I'm coming!"

Min watched the princess dash out of the room. She smiled, silently laughing at the girl she had brought up**. **Mei had never run that fast in her life.

The name Alphonse made the girl more hyper than the day she had eaten fifteen sugar pastries during the New Year. Min had not been a very happy woman that day – it had taken all of her willpower and strength not to drag the princess to her room and lock the door.

The joys of being an unofficial parental figure to a princess.

~*Break*~

"_Hello?"_ Al sighed with relief as he heard the timid, sleepy greeting.

"Hi Mei, I'm sorry if this is a bad time. Is there a time difference? Were you asleep? Do you want me to call back some other time?" he asked nervously, twisting the phone's cord in his fingers.

"_No, Alphonse, it's perfectly fine, I did say you can call whenever – I'm really very happy you did!" _

"Oh, that's all right then, I guess. How are you, Mei?"

He listened with a smile to her complaints about Ling and how he should just _confess _his feelings to Lanfan already, because it was almost _sad _how pathetically romantic and hopeless he was. He wasn't even running Xing right because he spent all his nights pining for herand came to council as a sort of zombie.

"_What about you, Alphonse? How is everything going in Amestris?" _Al gulped – he had really hoped to avoid this subject, especially when he had just gotten back from visiting Lieutenant Hawkeye in the hospital.

"We're mostly fine… Lieutenant Hawkeye came down with some illness, though, and no one's sure what's wrong with her. At this point, it's either a mental disorder or something they've never seen before."

"_That's terrible, Alphonse! Is she doing all right?" _

He didn't answer for a moment, choosing his words with care. "I think so. Colonel Mustang is really supportive, and everyone's trying the best they can, but it's not enough. Not yet, anyway. They still don't know if she's going to live or not."

He was prepared for comforting words, reassurances, tears even, not the reply she gave him. "_I'm coming." _

"What?"

"_I'm coming! Maybe alkahestry can help Miss Riza, Alphonse!"_

"You don't have to do that, Mei! I wouldn't want you to have to cross the desert again!"

"_Oh." _The disappointment in her voice was obvious. "_You don't want to see me, do you? I-It's all right, Alphonse. Tell Miss Riza I hope she gets better soon."_ He heard a rush of static through the receiver.

"No, no! That's not what I meant, Mei! I'd love to see you, but it's so dangerous to cross the desert, I wouldn't want anything to happen to you, that's all!" he said quickly.

"_Don't worry about me, Alphonse, I'll be fine! Just please keep Miss Riza…"_ her voice trailed off before continuing. She didn't want to say it, in fear of it being true. _"I-I'll be there in a few weeks. It takes less time now that the railroads are close to finished."_

"All right, Mei. I'll see you then. Call us when you get here, okay?" he reassured her, attempting to ignore the lump in his throat.

"_I will, Alphonse. Thank you." _

The line went dead, and Al leaned against the wall to steady himself. The word was spreading.

"Al, what did she say?"

Al turned to look at Winry before his lips quirked into a half smile. "She's coming, Winry. Mei wants to help."

Winry smiled back at Al. "I can't wait to see her."

They needed to focus on the positives, lest the negatives in their lives overwhelm them and drown them in sadness.

It was something they were practiced in.

~*Break*~

Mei hung up and took several breaths before turning around and focusing on Min. The graying hair of the matronly woman was now strictly pulled into its usual bun but she was still clothed in her nightgown.

"Is everything all right, princess?" she ventured, her wrinkled face even more creased with concern.

Mei didn't answer that question, choosing instead to walk out of the room. "Ready my papers, Min. I'm leaving for Amestris at dawn."

Min didn't dare argue with the determined noble and stepped out of the room to do her bidding. Nothing could change the mind of the seventeenth royal princess of Xing when she had that fire in her eyes. She had learned that from experience - twelve, nearing thirteen years of experience.

Her little girl was growing up so fast.

~*Break*~

Mei saw it only fit to wake the Emperor, of course, and wake the Emperor she did.

As rudely and loudly as she could possibly muster at two in the morning.

"LIIIIIIING!" she screeched, succeeding in waking Lanfan all the way down the hall. Seconds later, the lovestruck guard came rushing down the corridor in her sleepwear, a look of murderous rage on her face and knives in her hand.

"What's wrong?" she barked, appearing in the doorway tensed to fight. Mei looked up rather sheepishly, dragging Ling out of the comfort of his royal bed.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Lanfan. I'm just waking up your slug of a boyfriend. Any tips?"

Lanfan scowled but stowed her knives. "Chang, what in the name of –"

"I'm going to Amestris, and they won't open the kitchen for me," Mei said abruptly, silencing the young woman.

"What?"

"Miss Riza is sick, and I miss Amestris, so I'm going to visit." Mei scowled and shook her half-brother awake.

"Hawkeye's sick?" he asked groggily, staring up at his younger sister. "That's impossible, she can't be sick."

"She could be dying, Ling, so be quiet," Mei snapped.

"Young lord, you should probably open the kitchen," Lanfan whispered, helping the young Emperor to his feet.

His wasn't wearing a shirt.

She was blushing.

"That's… That's a good idea, Lanfan, thanks," he stammered, a pink tint on his cheeks as well. Mei scowled and began to push the teenagers towards the exit.

"Hurry up, you two, I'm leaving at dawn!"

~*Break*~

Mei sighed in resignation an hour later upon discovering the emperor of Xing and his faithful bodyguard in the middle of a gigantic stockpile of food, stuffing their faces. "I can't leave anything to you two, can I?"

Ling attempted to speak around the three rolls in his mouth. Sighing quietly, Lanfan silenced him and swallowed her own mouthful. "There's food in your bag, Mei. Why aren't you taking a caravan? It would be safer that way."

Mei slung the bag over her shoulder and nodded. "No, it'll only slow me down. I'll have Xiao Mei – she'll protect me when I can't protect myself."

"Your choice…" Ling muttered. "But I won't be mourning if thieves jump you."

"I did it once, Ling Yao, and I will do it again." Mei gave both of them a hug before exiting the kitchens. "Goodbye! I expect a sister-in-law named Lanfan by the time I return!"

The cooks walked in to their emperor and his bodyguard as red as the envelopes children received on New Year's.

~*Break*~

One week passed before Mei even reached the edge of the vast desert that she had to cross. It had taken her a month and three weeks last time, but the trains that were quickly flourishing in her gigantic home country cut so much time out. The builders of the desert railroad (began shortly after the Promised Day nearly seven months ago now) were quickly making progress through the desert sands.

Mei looked at Xiao Mei and sighed. It had been nice not having to brave the barren wasteland, but her luxuries were nearing the end of their being. In minutes, they would disappear for three weeks – or whenever she reached the Amestrian railroad team.

"Goodbye, my friends! Please, keep up the hard work!" she said as she jumped off the train and landed with a soft _thump _on the earth.

"Yes, princess! Thank you, princess!" cries of acknowledgement and farewell warmed Mei's heart as every worker paused their tedious work to bid the little girl goodbye.

"Be careful, my lady!" shouted a young woman from the Chang clan. Her name was Rui, and she had been a companion of Mei's since her train had left the Capitol.

"Don't you dare follow me, Rui!"

The young woman laughed. "I would not dare in fear of Xiao Mei biting my fingers off, princess!"

~*Break*~

It was colder than Mei remembered the desert to be. Late October was not the time she had travelled it before, and, as such, Xiao Mei's teeth chattered during the nights, even curled under Mei's coat and tunic conserving as much heat as possible.

The coat she had worn in Amestris was too small now, a testament to the seven months that had passed and the amount she had grown. Her new coat was the best Xing could offer, with cloth and buttons from places so far away that Mei couldn't pronounce their names.

It was warm, but it was new and foreign, two things Mei could live without. But a princess had to have everything.

A princess was too good to suffer in the dirt with her people. It was true the Chang clan was better off than they had been before, but they were still poor – hundreds of years of clans fighting on their land had depleted resources and crushed the resolve of many clanspeople. No matter what she did, her people still suffered.

Mei yawned and drew the unfamiliar coat tighter around her body. She had to trust Ling to help her people while she was gone. Otherwise, nothing would come of her travels.

~*Break*~

**You hate me, don't you? Yea, this is really late. I'm sorry. Don't kill m- *gets shot***

**Everything is coming, I know, I know! High School will come soon – yay, this one's Royai and… something? Fuery? :D Melons? A guest appearance? Hmm?**

**Songfire15 is helping me with medical terms! :DDD Everyone go glomp her! **

**SUNAARRROOOOSSEEEEEE WASSS HERREEEEEEE! **


	7. Misgivings

**Yes, I'm actually Hiromu Arakawa in disguise. Totally. Because she has nothing better to do than to write fanfiction. In English. Yea. That makes **_**sense.**_

**No, seriously, I don't own FMA.**

Mei was shocked that she spotted the Amestrian work camp after only six days in the desert. Mei had to check which way she was headed before settling on the fact that it was, in fact, the Amestrian work camp and she hadn't accidentally headed back towards Xing in the broad expanse of the desert.

No, she was heading west. Mei furrowed her brow and glanced at her tiny pocket watch. Maybe she could reach the camp before it closed up for the night. She glanced down at Xiao Mei and hefted her small suitcase up, clutching it to her chest. Mei took off running through the desert towards the tiny camp.

"Dad! Dad, there's someone out there, in the desert!"

"Khayal, get down from there, you'll injure yourself and your mother will never forgive me!"

Khayal grumbled but did as his father ordered, opening the hatch and shimmying down the ladder, then bouncing out to stand next to his father.

Halling raised his eyebrows as Khayal's yelling finally processed. "There's someone out there already? We barely got the notice yesterday – they're quick!"

"Dad, who do you think is coming? They said it was a very important official here to help with military medicines, didn't they?"

Halling nodded. "We'll just have to wait and see, Khayal. They're bound to be as stuffy and uptight as Yoki if they're military."

~*Break*~

"Dad, Dad, it's the girl from the mine collapse! It's Mei Chang!"

Mei smiled, wiping away tiny beads of sweat with her handkerchief. Halling grinned and slapped the small princess on the back in what he deemed a light, friendly gesture. "Good to see you again!"

Mei stumbled forward a few steps before regaining her balance. "It's a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Halling!" she exclaimed as she recovered. "How have the mines been?"

"Well, as far as I know, fine! After that collapse, though, I lost my liking for them. When this opportunity came along, I decided to take it and see where it got me. Glad I did – this job pays pretty well!"

Mei clapped her hands in excitement. "Oh, that's wonderful!"

Halling grinned. "You scooted pretty fast across that desert – how much longer do you think we have?"

The princess bit her lip. "I did it in six days. I don't know how fast you move."

Khayal dashed quickly into one of the tents and spread a blanket on the sand. "What are you here for, anyway?"

"Do either of you know Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye?" Mei asked, collapsing gratefully on a blanket. Halling nodded. "She's sick – very sick. My sweet Alphonse called me two weeks ago, and he was ever the gentleman and insisted I didn't have to put myself in danger by crossing the desert, but I simply _had _to. I missed Amestris so much, and dear Alphonse needs me! He's such a wonderful person…"

Halling and Khayal exchanged a glance as Mei swooned over Alphonse.

~*Break*~

Riza was getting restless as she saw nothing but the hospital's interior. As her attacks gradually quieted over another week, Riza was ready to shoot the next doctor she saw. They weren't helping anyway.

She hadn't said it, but she knew Roy could sense her frustration. They had been together too long for that _not _to be the case – besides, talking had never been either of their strong suits. Roy was charismatic, but actual conversation without awkward lapses and silences that you bore holes in your thumbs with your eyes in attempt to relieve the tension was something he was hardly capable of. Only people close enough to him to understand the complicated human being that was Roy Mustang could engage him in conversation.

Some casual onlookers, given this information, would look in on Hawkeye and Mustang together to see if it was true. A few went away disappointed – _they weren't even looking at each other, just sitting there, what were they gaining by that? – _but many others looked away after mere moments, blushing and muttering about feeling as if it was an extremely personal moment they did not want to intrude upon. This had happened many times as he was visiting her.

Visiting her in the hospital.

Riza groaned softly and put her head in her hands. She needed to get out of here. Riza needed to be at Roy's side, gun in hand, protecting his back. She didn't want him sitting next to her for hours while she twisted and cried from pain, or for him to embrace and comfort her as she cried. It made her feel so _weak. _Riza despised feeling weak and helpless.

She didn't _want _him to go, but Riza was scared to ask him to stay. Throughout all of her life, there had been two constants - alchemy and Roy. The first one she had no say in – one cannot pick one's parents – but the second… the second she wasn't so sure about. Could she have successfully avoided Roy as a child?

_Probably not, _her brain protested. _He was a charming, persuasive little bastard, that's for sure._

Riza silently cursed herself again – she could handle stress well, but this was pushing her to her very limits.

What if he left her?

Her breath stopped for several seconds as the thought echoed over and over in her head.

_No._

_He had said always. Always meant forever. _

_Forever. _

She stayed like that for a long while, staring at the white wall across from her bed, lost in thought.

~*Break*~

"Miss Riza, how are you doing?"

Riza lowered the book she had been inspecting – sent from Rebecca, sure to contain _something _distasteful, and Riza was attempting to figure out what it was – and looked up into the golden eyes of Alphonse Elric. She considered her answer for a split second before opening her mouth.

"I'm fine, Alphonse. What about you? We haven't heard much lately."

Al shrugged and sat down. "It's actually been a bit boring, to tell you the truth. It's like a vacation, almost. I'm a bit confused, now, about how I ever managed to survive in a suit of armor. Winry's apple pie is just too good!"

Riza smiled as she looked at Al, happy to see the young man in his body and not the suit of armor he had been trapped in for so long. She was so happy to finally be able to see him laugh and smile, finally having achieved his goal.

"I'll have to taste some - is it as good as Gracia's?"

Al answered her happily. "Well, that's where she got the recipe, but I've never had Mrs. Hughes' pie."

His good nature was contagious – Riza found herself smiling too.

"Miss Riza?"

"Yes, Alphonse?" She didn't bother to ask him to drop the _miss_. It was already a lost cause.

"What's the best pie you've ever had?"

Riza thought about the question. "It was probably the worst pie I've ever eaten, but the best one I received from the Colonel, actually. It was my thirteenth birthday, and he decided to make me my favorite type of pie." She paused and glanced at Al, but continued as he nodded. "He also decided to do it in the middle of the night, so I woke up in the morning with a misshapen, undercooked apple pie shoved in my face. It tasted terrible."

Al laughed. "Why is it your favorite, then, if it tasted so bad?"

The sudden, faraway look in her eyes did not escape Al's keen golden ones. "He tried so hard, just to see me smile. That's why it was my favorite."

"Miss Riza, can I ask you a question?"

"Of course, Alphonse. What is it?"

His voice quieted. "Were you and Colonel Mustang like Brother and Winry?"

"I think… I think the four of us are very alike. The Colonel and I grew up together, and he had to leave for the military. Of course, I followed him there instead of finding a passion of my own," she said quietly, her eyes locking with Al's.

Al scowled. "That's not fair. Brother and Winry can have their happy ending now, if they aren't so stubborn, but you and Colonel Mustang couldn't. Things have changed for us, but they haven't changed for you!"

Riza ignored the implications of her relationship with Roy – she still wasn't sure what her feelings toward her best friend even _were _at the moment_, _let alone if she loved him."Haven't you been told that life itself is unfair, Alphonse? The concept of equivalent exchange that you and Edward live by is impossible to live by when you face the grand expanse of the world."

"But – but you and the Colonel more than deserve a little happiness!" protested Al.

"It's not my place to say what I do and do not deserve. I am content with my life. There are things I would change about it if I could, but I don't wish for anything special. After Ishval, I consider myself lucky to be alive."

"You and Colonel Mustang are two of the most brave, dedicated people I know, Miss Riza. I don't care if you don't think you deserve happiness, but I think you do. Every human being should have a chance at happiness, and you shouldn't just give up on your life because you're just content with it!"

"Alphonse, they're putting high ranking veterans of Ishval on trial. If the Colonel isn't put on trial, I'll be fine. I was only a cadet – there are times I wish I would be tried so I could erase what I did there. It was a terrible war."

"They can't do that to Colonel Mustang! He didn't want to – it wasn't his choice! He's not a criminal!" Al stood up, his eyes blazing. Riza sighed.

"He didn't want to, but he did. That's the simple truth of all of the veterans of Ishval. When you don the uniform of your own free will, you sacrifice that will. He knew that and took it very seriously."

"They were only his orders! It's not fair to-"

Riza held up her hand to silence the irate young man. Al sat again, still scowling.

"I already told you this. Nothing's fair when faced with the grandness of the world. Some of us are dealt hands that may not match up with the morals that we live by, but we have to make the best of it anyways. It is the mark of a weak person to pine over what they do not have. Life is full of inequalities."

Al scowled. "You and Colonel Mustang aren't lucky, not in circumstance."

She furrowed her brow. "I'm not sure about the Colonel, but wasn't I just telling you that I was content with my life?"

"Wasn't I just saying that you deserve happiness, Miss Riza?"

"Again, Alphonse, I'm not going to dictate what I do or do not deserve. It's not for me to decide."

"Everyone has a say in their own happiness, Miss Riza, whether they deserve it or not! I hate seeing nothing change!"

"I think you're right, but the idea is idealistic and not applicable to life. I hope you never have to learn the way we did, but the Colonel and I received a rude awakening when we joined the military. True equivalent exchange is not equal."

"Well then, let's make it equal! We can do that, at least, can't we?" Riza watched Al glance at the timepiece on his wrist. "I have to go, Miss Riza, or I'm going to be late to meet Mei at the station! I'll see you later!"

Riza smiled again as he dashed out the door. "I'm not going to tell you not to try," she murmured, picking up the book that she had been inspecting. She opened the cover and grimaced.

Ah. That was it. It was a romance novel.

No doubt Rebecca's type of romance novel.

Riza grimaced and dropped the book off the side of the bed. There were so many things to entertain herself with – better ones, like staring at walls or trying to learn how to spit long distances.

~*Break*~

Mei stepped off the train to a swarm of unfamiliar people running to their destinations, jostling her and paying absolutely no attention to the tiny princess of Xing. She scowled and lifted her suitcase higher, charging forward to break through the throng.

"Mei!" Mei's head snapped up, and her large dark eyes scanned the crowd. Was it her imagination, or did she hear…

"Alphonse!" she cried, running to the blonde haired young man and nearly knocking him down with the force of her sudden embrace.

"G-good to see you, Mei…" Al stammered, blushing. After returning the hug, he carefully peeled himself away from Mei, slowly as to not offend or shock her.

"Oh, Alphonse, I missed you so much! Xing is so _boring, _and Ling and Lanfan's absolute refusal to be together is so _tedious._"

"They're still in denial?" Al asked, shocked. Mei nodded exuberantly, and then her expression changed dramatically to one of utmost solemnity.

"But really, Alphonse, is Miss Riza still okay? Can I go see her and try to help?"

Al nodded. "She's getting a little better… We think."

~*Break*~

It is unnecessary to say that doctors in a hospital are not used to tiny Xingese princesses with miniature pandas on their heads ordering around their entire staff. Tiny Xingese princesses with miniature pandas on their heads are a rarity in and of themselves, let alone stationed in Eastern Hope Hospital surrounded by members of the Amestrian state military who - barely seven months prior - had been responsible for saving the country from a power-hungry, arrogant homunculus that seemed absolutely convinced he needed to sacrifice all of Amestris to obtain God.

The doctors played along quite well, in fact, until Mei pulled out her chosen medical instruments. One of the nurses had quickly gone to notify the doctor, and he had immediately shown up, steam practically rolling out of his ears. Mei had to stifle a giggle as she watched the grey handlebar mustache on the balding man's face twitch and move as if it had a life of its own.

"Little girl, give me those right now! Knives are not permitted in this hospital!"

Mei turned around so her back was to the irate doctor. "I'm not that little, you old, grouchy man! I am Mei Chang, seventeenth royal princess of Xing, and I will not be spoken to in that disrespectful manner!"

"I don't care if you're the queen of Shamballa! Give me those knives!"

Her face darkened and her head slowly turned to face the doctor. "These are _alkahestric markers, _Doctor, for use in the practice of the medicines of Xing. Do I confiscate your scalpels?"

The unfortunate doctor froze, sensing the icy waves of hostility from the girl and her panda. "This is not Xing, miss," he said in one valiant last attempt to keep his slipping grip of control. "I cannot allow instruments and practices I am not familiar with. You see, it's all about the safety of the patient. I don't know who you are, and it's better to-"

He was silenced with a death glare from Mustang. The doctor's grey eyes widened as they stared into the narrowed onyx ones.

"I trust her, Doctor. Is my word not good enough for you?" Mustang's tone was quiet. If Doctor Peter Murphy hadn't been looking at the Colonel, he probably wouldn't have realized the grave tone in Mustang's voice. This man was angry at something, Murphy knew that much. At what, he couldn't tell.

"No, no, I, ah, I trust you, Colonel Mustang. If Lieutenant Hawkeye wants this, I suppose I will not stop you, but know that I will not be held responsible for anything that happens past this point. Is that understood?"

Everyone in the room gave a tense, simultaneous nod. Murphy cleared his throat. "Well, I'll… ah, I'll be of then."

Mei pursed her lips as she watched the doctor leave the room. "Hmph. That man is going to regret his character one day, I'm absolutely sure of it. He's not someone they should have in a hospital."

She turned back to her friends, smiling brightly once more. "Well, Miss Riza, it doesn't do us any good to wait, right? Let's see if we can fix the problem!"

~*Break*~

It took Mei an hour of dead silence to finally reach a conclusion.

"Those doctors are idiots, Miss Riza, I'm almost certain you have Guillian-Barre," announced the girl as she stowed her knives. "It's a syndrome. Your immune system is attacking itself, so that may be where your pain is coming from. Guillian-Barre isn't usually associated with pain like you and Alphonse described, so there could be an underlying condition as well."

Riza stared at Mei, attempting to comprehend anything the girl had just said.

"Say it outright, you little beansprout! Will she be all right?" Ed demanded.

Mei frowned. "I was getting there. Most patients that suffer from this don't die, so there's a very low probability that this will kill her. Complications from this – paralysis is common – is really what we should be worried about."

The entire room exhaled at once, relief and gratitude the only emotions showing on the faces of every single person in the room. Even Xiao Mei seemed relieved, collapsing against Mei's neck and settling down for a short nap.

~*Break*~

"No. I don't think it's wise to put him on trial. Colonel Mustang is well aware of what he did in Ishval, and he had no say in the war. Look at all he's doing to help rebuild Ishval."

"That's not what everyone else thinks, Fuhrer Grumman, sir. They want him put on trial for crimes in Ishval. You can't stop it. The order's already been sent out."

**2,966 words. Mrow. **

**Thanks for all the reviews, alerts and favorites, guys! It really warms my heart – especially the reviews. I love reviews.**

**Sunarose was here and wishes to refute rumors that she is, in fact, Hiromu Arakawa instead of IvyShort. But seriously, wouldn't that be cool? *goes starry-eyed***


	8. Trust

Slowly, as Riza's symptoms dwindled, the confounded doctors had no choice but to release her from the hospital.

"Less than three weeks," commented Mei as Riza argued with the nurse about walking out of the hospital instead of being wheeled out. "That's a good sign."

"Really, Mei?" asked Al, looking down at the Xingese princess.

Mei nodded. "If most of the symptoms disappear in three weeks, the patient's prospects are pretty good."

Gracia, leading Elysia, walked in smiling. As she saw the argument, she sighed and joined in.

Roy entered the room next, grinning widely with relief in his eyes.

Mei giggled softly as he put in his two cents. "What is this, Alphonse? Some sort of stage show?"

Al laughed softly. "Seems like it most of the time. Do you want to get something to eat, Mei? I think they'll be arguing for a while."

"Oh, Alphonse, that would be wonderful!" Al smiled nervously down at the tiny Xingese princess that was now latched onto his arm.

~*Break*~

"You know, there's something I really don't get with Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye," Winry commented Winry later that night as she was eating with Ed, Al, and Mei. "You're never quite sure whether being around them together is awkward or if you feel like you're intruding on something private."

Mei nodded exuberantly, swallowing a large bite of pasta. "I'm so glad I'm not the only one who felt it!"

Ed and Al shared a glance, then turned back to face the girls. "We felt it every time Brother turned in a report," said Al. "And when the Colonel and the Lieutenant were separated before the Promised Day, it felt like something was missing when you saw either of them."

"Bah, that bastard can't see how hard Hawkeye works to keep him from being kicked out of headquarters on his lazy ass."

Whack.

"What the hell, Winry? I think you broke my nose!"

"Well, you deserved it, Ed! You shouldn't say those things about Colonel Mustang," Winry said as she stowed her wrench back into her purse. Al turned to his half full plate of pasta and began playing with it casually in an attempt to keep himself somewhat sane and picked up her fork again.

Ed swore as he held his nose and attempted to stop the bleeding

Mei twirled more pasta on her fork and shoved it into her mouth in an effort to stifle her giggles.

"Ed, are you blind? Colonel Mustang was really worried about Miss Riza while she was in the hospital," Al finally said.."

"Well, I still think he should just marry her and be done with it. It's goddamned obvious that they're head over heels in love."

The other three nodded in unison.

Ed grinned suddenly, still holding a now bloody napkin still pressed to his bleeding nose. "Let's take this matter into our own hands. They obviously aren't going to get together without some help."

Al laughed nervously. "Don't you think that-"

"Operation Wedding is now underway!" said Winry gleefully. "Oh, I just can't wait until we go wedding dress shopping!"

Ed groaned. "How girly can you get?. Let's name it something cooler, like Operation Nighthawk."

Winry and Mei scowled. "No," said the two in unison.

"Operation Bastard and Angel?"

"ED!"

"Operation Guns and Roses?"

"What? No, wait, Winry, don't bring out the wrench again!"

And thus, four teenagers and one tiny panda hatched a scheme to bring together Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye forever in holy matrimony.

~*Break*~

She was finally home.

Home, of course, was a loose term to refer to her shabby little house. Riza doubted she'd ever had a real home at all. Her father, the academy, now this, and not one of them had ever made her feel safe and warm and all those other things that homes were supposed to be.

In fact, at this moment, her house was downright scary. Every shadow was another intruder, and every twitch was another attack threatening her in the dark. Then she would be alone, all alone.

Her mind still lingered on Al's words from the day before. She did consider herself happy – no doubting that, of course, (she had her team, and it was almost like having a family) but she couldn't drop the nagging feeling that Roy was still lingering in the past, unable to cope with the ghosts from Ishval that still plagued them all.

Riza sighed and glanced at the telephone. Her hand faltered as she reached towards the receiver.

What a coward. She thought to herself. It's just a phone call to my superior officer. Only to make sure he's all right. I'm a coward.

Eventually she gave up, disgusted with herself and her lies.

The phone rang later that night, waking her from a light doze.

"_Elizabeth, my dear! How are you tonight?" _

"…Colonel?" she asked in disbelief. "Honestly, sir, it's nearly midnight."

"_No, that's wrong, that can't be the time!"_

She checked the clock again. "Yes, sir. It's nearly midnight."

"_Well, I suppose you don't want me to invite you to have a few drinks to celebrate your miraculous recovery, do you?"_

The unfortunate lieutenant sighed. "Sir, where are you?"

There was a loud crash on the other end of the line before he answered. _"Fiftieth and Pine, I believe. Are you going to join me, my dear lieutenant?"_

"No, sir, I'm going to take you home. You're obviously drunk."

"_No, I'm – well, maybe a little, but really, I'm not bad!"_

Riza rolled her eyes. "Just stay where you are, sir."

With that, the lieutenant shrugged on her coat – his coat, she suddenly realized. He had draped it around her shoulders one day and she had never given it back – and walked out her door. No sense in letting him wander all around East City.

~*Break*~

If anyone had walked by, they would have laughed out loud to see the slightly tipsy superior officer arguing over safety concerns with his blonde lieutenant. But, considering it was midnight and East City (for the most part) still had the mentality of retiring no later than eleven, the streets were deserted apart from the few businessmen rushing home from their late night trains.

"Sir, I cannot allow you to drive home. Exactly how many drinks have you had?" Riza interrogated, her eyes boring into his skull.

He scratched the back of his head and shrugged. "On - t - a few."

"Exactly, sir. You can't drive home."

He frowned, then grabbed her wrist as she turned to get back into her car.

"Sir, let go," she demanded, her voice suddenly tired.

He shook his head. "I'm not going to let you drive."

"How else are you going to get home, Colonel?" she sighed, turning back to face him.

"What if your attacks come back? You wouldn't be safe driving."

"Sir, I won't be safe if you drive either."

They stood there facing each other in silence, beginning to lean forward slightly, unable to break eye contact with the other. As they were inches apart, Riza suddenly broke away and began to walk off, her face an immobile mask.

Roy tipped forward further and nearly face-planted onto the concrete.

"If we can't decide who should drive, we might as well start walking, sir."

He glanced at her back before stumbling to catch up.

They walked, trapped in uncomfortable silence that threatened to suffocate them and unable to break through it. The streets of East City twisted and turned until they found themselves at the doorstep of Roy's apartment building.

"Goodnight, sir."

She hesitated leaving a moment too long, somehow triggering the attention of his clouded mind.

"You don't want to go back," said Roy quietly, reaching out carefully to brush hair from her face.

His touch startled her into a frozen state, her eyes wide.

"Come on inside," he muttered. "I don't want you to get wet. I heard it was going to rain tonight."

~*Break*~

It was as if alcohol had not been consumed as Roy handed her a mug of tea and sat down next to her quietly.

"Thank you."

He looked up at Riza and nodded. She was fine, she was okay, she was alive and healthy and sitting right next to him.

Riza wasn't going to die.

What if she had died? What if she had left him alone, all alone in the entire world? He would have died. Without Riza, Roy was nothing and his dreams were pointless. Bradley had figured that out and taken advantage of it, taking her away from him.

That bastard, thinking he had the nerve to, the right to, every right to take her away from him. That _dead _bastard now, and Roy sincerely hoped he stayed that way.

"Thank you," he blurted suddenly, spilling half his mug onto the floor.

_Smooth, Roy. Smooth. What a reputation, what a name, brilliantly smashed. Reduced to a stuttering thirteen year old. _

"For what, Colonel?" Riza asked, setting her own mug carefully onto the table.

"For…For being there, staying there, right by my side, no matter what. For…for not dying."

"Well… I don't think it's much to thank me for, sir. You deserve more thanks than me."

He shook his head vigorously. "You're wrong. I don't deserve any thanks at all. You keepYou're what me going, every day, no matter what.. Without you, I'm…I'm nothing, Riza. You don't give yourself enough credit."

Roy suddenly realized he had not called her Hawkeye or Lieutenant, but Riza. He said it again in his mind. Riza. Not Lieutenant, not Hawkeye, not Miss Riza, just Riza. It sounded so nice, so perfect, so right.

He reached timidly for her hand and took it gently, looking yet again into her amber eyes and finding himself unable to look away.

"Am I really that much to you?" she whispered in disbelief. He leaned closer, closing the gap between them. It was faster now than the time earlier that night: his need was greater now that she knew how important she was.

"Yes." He could almost feel her lips against his. They were millimeters apart now.

In an instant, he found himself in a warm embrace instead of then gentle kiss he desperately craved. Riza's head was pressed into his shoulder, and she was breathing shakily into his wrinkled dress shirt.

Roy glanced up at the ceiling, trying to steady his own breath. _So close. They had been so close._

~*Break*~

To say that waking up the next morning entwined in each other's arms on his couch was awkward was a vast understatement.

He had been scared of this as she dozed off in his arms and he had been too tired to lift her up and carry her to his bed. That was, of course, in addition to the fact that he was too greedy to sacrifice the rare pleasure of holding her so close.

Roy hadn't exactly been sure what he was expecting as sunlight filtered through the blinds and Riza began to stir. What he had hoped for was optimistic at best – there was really no way Riza Hawkeye was in love with _him_ anyway_. Him_, a murderer, a Casanova, her superior officer and childhood friend. There was no way someone as perfect as her could love someone as scarred and _im_perfect as himself.

But if he hadn't been sure before last night, he definitely was now. Roy was totally in love with her – completely head over heels for Riza , and there was nothing that could change that.

She stirred again in his arms, and it was all he could do to restrain himself from tilting her head up and capturing her lips in a kiss. Roy forced himself to look away. _Control the urge, you idiot. She'll murder you._

Her eyes fluttered open and looked up at him sleepily as her cheeks colored bright red.

"I'm so sorry, that was inappropriate, sir, I'll just go now," she stammered, pulling herself out of Roy's warm embrace. In a moment, she was gone and Roy was left alone in his apartment with empty hands and an aching heart.

~*Break*~

Riza realized too late that it was her first day back at work in two and a half weeks and if she wanted to get there even nearly on time, her morning was going to be absolute hell. But for the sole reason that she was Riza Hawkeye, and time itself would rather go backwards than declare that she was even two minutes late, Riza arrived at the office exactly on time.

Upon seeing the state of chaos the office was in, however, she was tempted to turn around and run away as fast as she possibly could.

"Master Sergeant, what in the name of God have you, Breda, Havoc, Falman, and the Colonel done to this office?" she demanded, pulling her gun out of its holster and flicking the safety off with a practiced finger.

Fuery, who had been attempting to straighten out his desk before the arrival of the irate first lieutenant, paled and most likely stopped breathing.

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant Hawkeye! I tried, I really did, but then Breda and Havoc decided to drench the Colonel to try to cheer him up, and then Black Hayate came in and got mud all over the floor, and Falman didn't help but he really didn't do anything!"

Faced with the hyperventilating animal lover, Riza sighed and massaged her temples. "Fuery, get the mop. Where is everyone else?"

"I-I don't know," he said nervously. ". They're not here yet."

Riza frowned. "I'm going to shoot them."

~*Break*~

Roy arrived several minutes later, slinking into the office and shrugging off his overcoat silently. When he glanced up at the room, he winced. "It looks so much worse in the daylight."

"Just start on your paperwork, sir." Riza didn't meet his eyes as she addressed him.

"Are you sure, Hawkeye? Do you need any help with-"

"Just do your paperwork, sir."

He bit back a sigh as he sat down behind his desk and glanced at the large stack of paperwork awaiting him and picked up a pen.

Falman shuffled in in the next instant, nodding to Hawkeye in quiet greeting. She continued to clean, keeping a close watch on the door for Breda and Havoc.

"Good morning, Lieutenant Hawkeye!" announced an overly cheery Edward Elric as he burst into the office.

"Hello Edward. How are you?" Riza asked as she straightened out her desk.

After Ed had made his presence known, Al, Mei, and Winry walked in as well.

"Good, Hawkeye.! What about you?" he asked too innocently not to arouse suspicion. Riza raised an eyebrow as she looked yet again at Edward. He looked away and began to whistle.

She hesitated in answering, glancing ever so briefly at the Colonel. "I'm fine."

The foursome glanced at each other before stepping out of the office in one fluid motion.

"Damn, it's worse than we thought. The sexual tension in there is so think you can't cut it with a knife," whispered Ed, his good-natured grin gone as quickly as it had come.

Al, Winry and Xiao Mei nodded. Mei's brow furrowed in confusion. "Wait, what's sexual tension?"

Her companions blushed and looked down at their shoes.

"Excuse me," muttered a gruff voice behind them. The foursome's heads whipped around and revealed an uncomfortable looking balding man with a grey mustache He stiffened, and the two young men behind him clutched their guns tighter.

Shocked, they shuffled out of the way to allow them to pass, then peered into the office to witness the event.

"Ah, Jennings. Is something wrong? It's early to be giving the monthly report," Roy said, looking up from his paperwork.

The military policeman sighed and managed to look Roy in the eye. "I'm afraid so, Mustang. I'm here to place you under arrest for murder. You'll have to come with me."

For an instant, nothing moved. Even the birds outside the window ceased their endless chatter, and the wind stopped howling against the panes of glass. The terror filled look of shock on Roy's face faded into in to a mask that betrayed no emotions.

Roy broke the silence. "Ishval?" he asked quietly, setting down his pen.

Jennings nodded stiffly. "I wish I wasn't here, Mustang, but it would take a coward to run from something like this."

Roy stood up, glanced down at his desk, and walked over to the unfortunate chief of police. "It can't be helped then, can it?"

Jennings shook his head sadly. The other two military policemen quickly confiscated Roy's gloves and secured handcuffs around his wrists before leading him out of the office and following Jennings out of headquarters.

As Mei watched them walk past, she could have sworn she saw mist in the eyes of all four of the men.

"YOU BASTARD! YOU CAN'T TAKE HIM!" screamed Ed, attempting to run after Jennings only to be held back by Winry, who bit her lip and shook her head.

The sad procession paused in its walk down the hallway. Jennings motioned something, and Roy turned to look Ed in the eye.

"Fullmetal, quiet down. This was inevitable, and making a scene is not going to solve anything."

Ed didn't move, but his eyes told everyone there what he would do if the Colonel had not warned him of the consequences.

The look on Riza's face was one to suggest someone had walked in and shot the Colonel for the amusement of watching him die. She collapsed to her knees, her entire body shaking and tight fists pounding the tile floor. Fuery patted her back in a vain attempt to comfort the lieutenant.

"No…" she whispered, her voice high and full of pain, her eyes staring out into the hallway where Roy was quickly being escorted out of sight. "Take me with you."

***gasp* And so the plot thickens! Reviews are much appreciated, and if someone could message me informing me on the process of military court cases and all that, that would be awesome. Otherwise, I have to pick my wonderful father's brain, and I think he's a bit miffed by my asking so many questions about war crimes already.**

**Dad: So is this guy your hero or something?**

**Me: Yes. Yes he is.**

**Dad: How can a mass murderer be your hero?**

**Me: It's complicated. **

**Dad: *silence as he (a Navy vet) comprehends this***

***hands mic to the beta fairy*(FAIRIES!)***

***snatches mic* ROY NUUUUUUUUUU *sobs and eats popcorn* Also, you used two of my beta thingies. The one about the mic and the one about the beta fairy. So I take credit for those. -Sunarose (is the beta fairy)**

**Wait, I know I stole the mic… OH RIGHT NEVERMIND, yea, she gets credit. And I will give her cookies on a later date.**


	9. Doubt

She had been expecting this. She didn't know why it was such a shock, or why she couldn't breathe as fear set in. She had researched this, looked for every tiny loophole, and Riza was positive that he would be fine. He would be let off, perfectly fine. She had made sure of this, absolutely sure of this.

So why was she so scared?

"Miss Riza, are you all right?"

_No, she wasn't, and everyone there knew it._

Strong arms pulled her to her feet and guided her to the nearest chair. Riza followed them blindly, her mind reeling in turmoil and stomach kneading with apprehension. She wasn't crying. It was no time for tears, no time to show more weakness than she already had. Riza cursed her helplessness, staring down at her clenched fists with as much concentration as she gave every perfect round fired out of her gun. Why was it all so sudden? Had they planned his arrest especially for her first day? _Why was the timing so perfect? _

A set of shuffling footsteps and the squeak of a wheelchair alerted her to the arrival of Breda and Havoc. They didn't say a word.

Mei Chang, the princess, was crying for reasons Riza could not hope to guess. This was only a temporary setback – why was she crying? What was so painful and terrifying about this that anyone would cry?

A vision of his face as Jennings told him of the arrest flashed through her mind and Riza's breath hitched in her throat. _That was why Mei was crying. _

Alphonse embraced the princess somewhat awkwardly and smiled down at her. Mei looked up briefly, taking in the scared and unsure smile, then buried her head in Al's shirt, muffling the already quiet sobs. No one bothered even attempting to smile after that. They all stood in silence instead, brains muddled from the events that had brought them there.

It took a long time for someone to speak any words at all. "Miss Riza," Winry mumbled, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, "you don't look well."

It took a deep breath for Riza to answer the young woman. "I'm fine," she said loudly, trying to convince herself as much as Winry. Her old mask, a mask she had shed for three short weeks, slid back onto her face and she stood up.

"No sense wasting any time. Fuery, Breda, there's a list of names in the top left drawer of Colonel Mustang's desk. Contact as many of them as you possibly can." Fuery and Breda saluted stiffly and turned away from the group to search for the paper. Riza turned to Falman. "Go to the library and research laws on murder and war crimes during Ishval and anything else that could be useful."

The Second Lieutenant nodded and picked up a small book from his desk before leaving the office. Havoc lit a cigarette, its smoke thickening the atmosphere even further. For once, Riza did not lecture him for smoking inside. "Havoc, put a line in to the Fuhrer. We need the trial date, the official offense, everything you can find out. Absolutely everything."

"Yes ma'am," answered the smoker before backing out of the room, expertly maneuvering his wheelchair. Riza watched him leave for only a moment before shrugging on her coat.

"Wait, Lieutenant, where are you going?" asked Ed, his voice on the verge of panic – as if she had forgotten that he was there and that he needed something to do.

"I'm going home to review my journals from Ishval and getting a few more things that we'll need, Edward," she answered stiffly, black boots clicking softly on the white floors.

Winry's death grip on Ed's arm suddenly broke as she began to button up her own coat. "May I come, Miss Riza?" she asked quickly, before Riza could exit the office.

Riza turned her face away from the young woman, arguing with herself silently before finally nodding in consent. "Thank you, Winry," muttered the lieutenant more out of habit than out of appreciation.

"Winry!" Ed whispered harshly, grabbing her arm. "What the hell are you doing? Hawkeye doesn't want you going with her, and she's just too damn polite to say it!"

Her mouth turned down to somewhere between a scowl and a frown as she freed her arm from his loose grip. "She needs someone, Ed. I know she doesn't _want _me there, but she needs someone, and it might as well be me."

Winry's green woolen scarf snapped out of sight as she rushed to catch up with the impassive First Lieutenant.

o0o0o0o0o

Winry had always imagined that the home of Riza Hawkeye would be a warm, friendly place. The tiny house she entered was not a home, and it was far from anything that resembled comfort or warmth. It was nothing but a place to collapse on your bed after a long, hard day – respectably neat (Winry expected no less from the efficient aide of a disorganized Colonel), but with little decoration, little light, and almost no personal keepsakes. It was a generic house, one that could belong to anyone. It was not anything near a home.

It was odd for Winry to enter a house that was not a home. In Resembool, every family was so deeply rooted into their homes that it would be impossible for them to move an inch. Resembool was a tiny town, so tiny that most everyone in it was related in some form or fashion. Only the Elric family had been even slightly detached from their house, but it was still a home.

"I'm sorry it's so messy, Winry. I haven't had much time to unpack."

Riza flicked on the light switch and pushed back the curtains, adding the weak sunlight to the living room and brightening it somewhat. Winry slipped off her coat and scarf, clutching them tightly to her chest as a sort of safety blanket in such an unfamiliar place. "I don't think it's anything to apologize for, Miss Riza. It's not even messy," she said kindly, smiling reassuringly up at Riza.

Riza looked away quickly, not allowing herself to meet the bright gaze of the younger woman. Winry's smile quickly vanished, and her chin dropped.

"The journals are over here, on the bookshelf. Would you take the ones from 1908 and 1909? I have some papers in the back I need to retrieve." Winry nodded, making her way over to the wooden shelves.

"There are so many!" she exclaimed as she surveyed the row of mismatched, patchwork journals. Some were ratty, others without a scratch – it was easy to tell when they had been filled.

Riza smiled half-heartedly. "Not when your father was an alchemist. I still have ten empty ones sitting in boxes somewhere. He bought them all when I was young – I think he got at least a hundred, but all I remember was him strolling in triumphantly with loads of books in his hands, shouting, 'I'm set, Elizabeth! I'll never have to buy them again!'"

"They should be in the middle of the shelf – I don't pull them out much," murmured Riza before she left the room.

Winry slid one of the journals off of the shelf and examined its cover. The only marking on it was a shining gold character and five tiny letters underneath - _truth. _Winry opened up the small book and looked onto the inside cover, searching for a date before intruding on the Lieutenant's privacy and reading the entry on the first page.

_Riza Hawkeye – 1911_

Winry replaced the journal and tried another a few volumes back.

_Riza Hawkeye – 1907_

She frowned, opening another and discovering it too was in the wrong year.

"Miss Riza?" she called timidly after examining every date in the journals. "None of these are from 1908."

After receiving no response, Winry poked her head into the hallway Riza had disappeared down several minutes before. "Miss Riza?"

"I'm in the bedroom."

"None of these are from Ishval."

An age passed in the seconds of silence before Riza walked out of the bedroom clutching a small stack of papers with tiny cracks in her unreadable mask. Winry could make out fear in her words. "That's not right. I remember unpacking them. I read some of my entries, the ones from June."

_June, 1908. _Even as a little girl, Winry knew that was when the last part – worst part – of Ishval was.

Riza tore each journal off the shelf, dropping them onto a nearby armchair after reading their dates.

_As a young woman, Riza knew Ishval even better. _She was there every choking on the sands – an scorching hot as it had been in the summer before. Bullets met flesh, and people fell. No matter what they seemed to do, no matter who they tried to protect, someone died.

None of them were right. None of them were her careful chronicles of every detail that happened to her in the desert in 1908.

"_Let's get out of here." Riza looked up in alarm at Roy's haunted eyes._

"_We pledged our lives and support to the military, Major," she whispered, not even believing her own words. "This is wrong, but…"_

"_It's not our goddamned duty if it's illegal, Riza. Murder on this scale… it's not even strategy anymore. War – real war – should have strategy. Without strategy, war is nothing but mass murder. That's what it is here. I don't care about myself, but I care that I promised your father that I would look after you and that I've done a shitty job so far." His dark eyes shone with the faintest ray of hope._

_There was a mocking round of applause from behind them, and the pair turned to face a maliciously grinning Kimblee. "Touching, touching. I have a little twist to add to this, though." His voice dropped low and his slitted eyes shifted from Roy to Riza, then back again. "It would be unpatriotic to leave. Therefore, as is my duty as a patriot, if either of you even hesitates when killing anyone, I will end the other's life. If you both leave, I will kill Maes Hughes, then I will trace your trail and kill one of you so the other can watch their best friend die."_

_The grin on Kimblee's face only stretched as both Roy and Riza's breath hitched. "Take that into consideration before you do anything reckless, Flame Alchemist. You too, Miss Sniper." _

_The bells rang out through the dry desert air, tolling their unwelcome message relentlessly. Kimblee put his hands in his pockets and turned his back to the victims of his threats. "Well," he said casually, as if he had been conversing casually with two old friends, "it's my shift. I'll be seeing you two later."_

Riza still remembered the turmoil of emotions on Roy's face as Kimblee left. He had looked so terrified, so hurt, and so helpless that Riza had embraced him quickly in a vain effort to comfort his tortured eyes. _His hands gripped her arms painfully tight, and as his eyes shut and he lowered his head onto Riza's shoulder, she could barely hear his whispers._

"_Go," he said. "I don't care if he kills me, but I want you to escape and get out of here before this war affects you like it affected me. Forget me - I'm begging you." _

_She grasped him tighter, unable to think. Eventually, she managed her reply, but the lump in her throat prevented her from saying it with the confidence she wished to._

"_I know you want me to go, but I'm not leaving. You might not care about yourself, but I do. I care whether you live or die, and I'll watch your back until this war is over."_

_His death grip loosened and he raised his head to look in her eyes. He managed a ghost of a smile as he rose to his feet. His fingers, rough through ignition gloves, brushed her cheek for nothing more than half a second and Riza felt chills run through her body despite her mind's protests. The childhood crush she had been victim to would not die easily, even on this battlefield. "You're loyal to a fault. Stay safe, Hawkeye." _

_She turned to watch him straighten his back and harden his face once more, continuing on his never ending masquerade. "Yes, sir," she said, her voice a little stronger this time as Roy walked away from the ruins he created, if only for a little while._

_Those memories she had long despised could now be their reprieve. _

Riza moved to a different box, still hoping against all hope that the journals from Ishval would be there, waiting for her. She remembered it all, down to the wrinkles in his shirt and the sand in Kimblee's hair, but her lone word without any proof that the event happened at all would never be enough. Even with the journals, it wouldn't be enough. Most considered her too close to Roy to say anything that was actually the truth. Riza stopped searching, setting the book she had been shifting through down onto the chair with the others.

"I don't even know why they matter. It's not like they'll believe my word anyway, would they? I was under his command in Ishval, I've been under his command for _years_ after it, they won't even consider me."

Winry, unsure how to help the desolate woman, picked up the journals from the pile and began to slide them back onto the shelf. "I don't know, Miss Riza. It probably depends on what you're going to say. If you are against him, you'll be believed. If you're for him, you'll be a liar. Somewhere in between, and you could be believed."

There was an ugly, awkward silence as Winry's words sunk in and made both of them shiver with apprehension.

"Where do you think they could be, Miss Riza?" Winry finally whispered as the last books were replaced to their proper place on the shelf.

"I haven't seen them since the night I went to the hospital - I was reading them earlier that evening."

Winry bit the edge of her lip in thought. "Do you think they could have been stolen?"

The Lieutenant shook her head. "It's doubtful. If they were stolen, it's almost guaranteed that the thief knows me, and I pick people as carefully as I can. Nothing else was even touched."

o0o0o0o0o

He wasn't fighting. He wasn't screaming bloody murder, lashing out at the escorts, or sobbinglike a spoiled child who didn't get a toy they wanted.

But then again, he wasn't speaking either. It was as if Mustang had lost himself in another world and would now never come out of it.

_Ishval held bad memories for all of them. _Jennings turned to leave the Colonel alone. _They must have been worse than anything for the so-called hero of it all. Of all he had heard about the Colonel's days as Major Mustang, it would take a miracle for him to get out of the trial alive._

Ishval had truly been hell, and it still refused to bury itself any deeper than nightmares.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

It was early morning when word reached the new leaders of Ishval.

"They're starting the trials! They're starting the redemption!" cried a boy as he ran through the streets of the Kanda district, his sand-colored tunic and purple sash flying out behind him. Waving the newspaper proudly, he stopped in the large, bustling square and shoved it in the face of the first person he found.

"Kamar!" The boy's dark skin paled considerably as he turned to face the owner of the voice. His name was sacred – his mother didn't use it on any normal day.

Her tone was softer as she grabbed his wrist and began to lead him home. "This is something only fools are happy about, do you realize that? Almost all of the people who truly deserved death from the sins they committed against Ishvala were killed on the Promised Day, little one."

Kamar puffed out a breath, irritated, as he was dragged back to his home. "But Mother, it's Roy Mustang that's going on trial. He killed Grandpa."

His mother crouched down to meet his eyes. Angry crimson met compassionate ruby as she ruffled his hair and attempted to explain. "Yes, Kamar. He did kill your grandfather, but that is nothing to hold against him. The bread we eat every day, the house we live in, the rebuilding of the Holy Land, it all started because of him."

"But what about the souls of Ishvalans he used to regain his sight? Doesn't that go against Ishvala's will?"

"My, aren't you the little scholar? He received the consent of Major Miles and Akhoya before doing so, and if Ishvala had disapproved he would not have given Colonel Mustang his sight back." Watching her son process the new information, she stood up and flicked her thick white braid behind her back. "Don't believe everything you hear. I'll be back in a bit."

Kamar watched his mother leave in silence, but as soon as she disappeared from his view, the little boy dashed up the stairs, yelling once more.

"Big sister!"

"What exactly do you mean by this, friend? How do you think you'll win if you sacrifice your queen like this?" Miles asked his opponent.

Scar smiled briefly before releasing his hand from the pristine rook. "Look ahead, Major. I thought the General taught you that."

"A woman to see you, sirs. She says she brings important news."

The pair shared a glance before nodding to allow the woman in. Standing to greet her, several pieces of the game were knocked over. A matching king and queen hit the floor with a tiny _thump_.

"May Ishvala light your path as he has lightened mine. Today, though, the path is dark," murmured the newcomer as her eyes looked first down at her bare feet, then up at the two men. "You have probably heard. Word has reached us that the Ishvalan trials have begun. The first man to go up for his crimes is Roy Mustang."

"Colonel Mustang? Who's against him?" asked Miles, glancing up at his companion. The scar on his forehead seemed more prominent on his features when his eyes were closed, as they were now. "Are you all right, Akhoya?"

There was no reply from the man who had been known as Scar, the murderer of State Alchemists, the religious killer. There was a tiny nod of his head. It was all that was necessary for Miles to understand all that was happening in the former killer's tormented mind.

**Well, hi guys! I finally finished chapter nine! I'm SO sorry I haven't updated lately, and I wanted to thank an awesome person that reviewed last chapter – they called themselves Westwindhowl, and gave me some great constructive criticism and I REALLY WANT TO HUG THEM. **

**Who'm I kidding, they probably abandoned this story waiting for me to update XD **

**So let's let Sunarose say a few words…**

**Or she'll stay silent. Right then. **

**Reviews are loved :D I'll give you cookies!**


	10. Faith

**So, on to the next chapter! Reviewing my chapter plans, there may be a separate chapter for the epilogue, giving this story sixteen instead of fifteen. But happy reading! **

**Sorry for being dead – I'll probably be dead for another month and a half. My coach decided that I was going to have practice 4:15 to 9 twice a week until Worlds, but hey, I love jump rope! It's all good! But if there are any of you salivating and torturing yourselves over the fact that I never update, (yea right) that's why.**

"Miss Tael, are you sure you heard correctly? For Colonel Mustang to go on trial like this has no meaning. What use is it, other than political gain for those who do not deserve it?"

Kamar's mother nodded. "I truly hate to say that it is Roy Mustang, but I speak nothing but the truth. The trial is sometime next month. They have decided that he needs at least thirty days, though I see no point in dragging this out."

Scar dipped his head. "That is not your true intent on coming, is it? You are here about Kamar and Ahava."

Tael sighed. "I will reveal my selfish intents, Akhoya."

"Then do so, and have the blessings of Ishvala upon your soul."

"Do not tell Kamar and Ahava of their family, I beg of you. When they come – they shall come, there is no doubt – do not tell them who killed their father. They have found out about their grandfather, but they do not know our story and why all of their family is dead. They are too young, still." Tael looked up at the leader of Ishval with pleading crimson eyes. "They will misunderstand. When Kamar and Ahava come, tell them you know nothing. Say you did not watch them die as I know you did."

"That would be lying, Tael. Ishvala frowns upon those who lie."

Miles watched the conversation with mild interest, bending down to pick up the king and queen and rolling them around in his palms before replacing them side by side on the chess board.

"Ishvala frowns on those who speak nothing _but_ lies, Akhoya. Surely He sees no harm in protecting two children from a neverending hatred?" Her delicate fingers curled into tight fists, a warning to the stubborn priest.

"I will not lie, Tael. If they do not ask, I will not tell. If they do, I will not lie. You cannot protect themforever."

Her fists only grew tighter as the plea in her voice vanished. "I am not protecting them so much as protecting Roy Mustang. This world is built of lies, Ishvala have mercy on it, and this one is to protect my own children, a guilty man, and you. If they ask and you tell him the truth, they would be two more people to know your former identity, _Scar._"

The man with two names did not react as she finished her statements, keeping his tanned face unreadable and stone cold. "You figured it out, Tael, though I doubted you of all the souls in Ishval would be dumb to it. Do not worry. Did I ever say I was going to tell him the whole truth?"

Tael's eyes softened. "Then I must thank you, Akhoya. May the path be light again."

"The path will always be light to those who seek its way. May Roy Mustang see its glow as he has seen it before."

The world was dark to him.

Lost in hopeless memories of long forgotten times, Roy sat in the dingy cell with his back hunched against the wall. He was twenty-three again in the deserts of Ishval, and the coarseness of the sand on his skin wasmixed yet again with the slick sweat on his brow. His throat was dry as sandpaper, and the stench of death was heavy in the air. As he lifted his hand, trembling, devouring yet another city in flames, a young blonde sniper picked off the few survivors with a tired but precise pull of the trigger.

"_I'm sorry, Hawkeye."_

_She looked up at him from her post, her voice soft as she replied. "What did you ever do? I don't recall you asking me to join the military or requesting that I be by your side for this massacre."_

_Roy did not respond for a long second, staring down at the transmutation circle sewn into his gloves with red thread. "I betrayed your trust. You heard my naïve dreams and believed them, and they were as good as lies. I mislead you, and I regret that more than I can say." _

"_Did you believe your own words, Mr. Mustang?" _

_He looked at her in shock, not expecting the response she gave him. "What?" _

"_I believed in them, and I still believe in them. Did you believe in them?" _

"_Yes," he answered, his voice shaky._

_Riza stood up, setting down her rifle on the ruins of the formerly ornate and beautiful main square of the Morek district. It had once been a pride of Ishval, the square that they had ruined forever and tainted with the blood of the innocent. "We will get through this, and those ideals will be used again, to change this country for the better. You and Father talked so much about equivalent exchange, and this is when we have to try to mute our sins with our good deeds. We can't erase them, but we can try." _

_Roy brushed his fingers over her cheek for nothing more than an instant, too cowardly to try to show how he truly felt. When his voice returned to him, it was smooth enough that he could fake bravado as he so often did. "You're right, Cadet. You're always right." _

_A terrible scream pierced the heavy air, the scream of a human in grief beyond their wildest imagination. A young Ishvalan woman, clothes torn and legs badly burned, sobbed over the charred remains of one man and another with blood leaking out of his head. A tiny child, seemingly unscathed, held the younger corpse's hand as if he would suddenly wake up again and embrace the little girl that waited so patiently by his side. Roy and Riza did not react, watching the scene with hearts of lead instead of broken ones. _

_The woman looked up from the remains of her husband and father, her eyes locking with the soldiers. "Why did you kill them? They were as human as anyone else in this hell! Why didn't you kill me? You murdered the rest of my people, why am I so different than them? Why am I not dead?" she screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Is it only because of this child I carry?" _

_Roy lifted his hand, readying to end her life and bracing himself for the dreaded silence that always followed death. Under the teary stare of the woman, however, he could not bring himself to do it. Riza fell to her knees and hid her face, the impact of the hysterical woman's words sinking in. _

"_Are you going to do it, Flame Alchemist, or are you going to leave me here to die by some other hand of that damned army of yours?" The woman stood up and attempted unsuccessfully to stop the shaking in her disfigured legs. _

"_I…I can't." _

_The look of shock on Riza's face startled Roy. Was it too much for her to believe he wasn't a murderer?_

"_Are you human, Flame Alchemist? Against all I have heard, is this mercy from a dog of the military?" _

_She took a step towards him, holding her swollen abdomen protectively. "What more guilt is two more lives after the hundreds you took just two minutes ago? Don't think about the one you will take that hasn't even seen the world, Mustang. Don't think about the children, or the women, or the ones too old and frail to protect themselves. Don't think about them, lost souls innocent of wrong." _

_He couldn't move. _

"_Just please, as my dying wish, Flame Alchemist, grant me one reprieve," she said icily, her eyes drilling into his. "Don't kill my daughter." _

_The effort too much to bear, she collapsed onto the ground. There was a flicker of movement from a ruin in the background – a trick on his tired eyes, most likely. _

_Riza watched as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and she barely managed to catch him before he hit the ground. _

That woman and her daughter were probably long dead by now.

_No. _Roy corrected himself. _The woman, the daughter, and the unborn child _were probably long dead now. Three more lives to add to his guilt. Three more in the thousands.

Looking on it now, as he did, hopeless and alone, it was enough to make him think of death. For all those he killed, for all the dead…

He deserved to die. A person was killed if they murdered anywhere but the battlefield. He had not murdered, but massacred. Why had he not been put to death long ago? A war is a war – casualties are inevitable – but a massacre like Ishval was hardly a war at all.

But he was a coward. Too many times after Ishval, he had raised the gun to his temple and prepared to shoot, but he could not blindly pull the trigger and end his life. Nothing but a coward, too scared to end his own life when he had ended so many others.

"_Why are you fighting?" _

"_It's simple. I don't want to die. That's all. The reason is always simple, Roy."_

"_Even when you were suffering, you didn't run and leave us behind. With those powerful flames, you always cut across the battlefield and into the enemy, and didn't let us underlings die in vain."_

"_Inside me, the war isn't over yet. No...it will never end as long as I live." _

"Mustang."

Roy's head jerked up, the sea of voices in his head fading as a crisp, live voice cut through them like a knife. "Jennings?" he asked in disbelief, reality still an illusion from the dreams that were all too real.

"Yes, it's me, Mustang," answered the gruff voice. "Don't ask me how they managed it, but you've got thirty-five days, and your subordinates managed to get you released until then. Released on your own recognizance. Sign this."

A huge document was forced into Roy's arms by a worn out looking Jennings. "You've got some first-class people there, Mustang. They went right to the Fuhrer and managed to get through."

"Thank you."

"Thanking your jailer? What a gentleman."

Roy managed to crack a tiny smile. "Glad someone thinks so."

"What do you want, Lieutenant?" Fuery asked after exchanging an abrupt greeting with Riza.

"_Is he out yet?"_ he heard, her voice either unsteady or the static from the phone messing enough with his head to hear Riza Hawkeye as unconfident as she had looked for the past two weeks.

"Yes, he's out. We got through to Fuhrer Grumman. The trial is in thirty-five days, giving us time to prepare."

"_Good." _Fuery could hear the relief in her voice. _"Fuery, check the bottom right drawer of my desk." _

"Yessir. What should I be looking for?"

"_Journals. You've seen them before." _

"Yes, of course, Lieutenant Hawkeye." Fuery set down the phone and hurried across the room to Riza's desk, opening the drawer and peering into it hopefully. In it was one battered tome, its brown cover blending in so well with the desk that Fuery almost glazed his eyes right over it. Picking it up and checking the date inside the cover – _Riza Hawkeye, March 1908, _where he had seen it many times before – Fuery hurried back to the phone.

"There's one here, Lieutenant. March 1908."

Her tiny sigh sounded like a rush of static through the receiver. "_That's the only one, Master Sergeant?" _

"Yes. It's the only one."

"_Thank you. We'll be back soon. Keep an eye out for the Colonel – if you see him, do not let him out of your sight. He's going to get drunk if he can, and we need to keep him alert. The last thing we need is a newspaper twisting the drinking habit. That would be the death of him." _

"Will do, Lieutenant."

The line went dead and Fuery replaced the phone to its hook.

He blindly walked down the streets, not caring where he was going or how long it would take to get there. He supposed that his mind meant to carry his feet home for a nice drink and a way to forget about the world for a few hours. Instead of his own apartment, however, he ended up in front of a small house.

Riza's house.

Roy sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. Somewhere in his subconscious, he had realized that drinking until he threw up his stomach was not the right option. Something in his mind had told him that all he needed right now was Riza. Riza would be able to help. She always did, no matter if she shot at him or if she hugged him tightly and didn't let go. _It was odd to consider the fact that she was the real reason he was alive. _After all those times he held the gun to his temple, she had finally caught him.

"_What are you doing, Major Mustang? Guns are dangerous. One should never point them at themselves," _she had said, her face void of any emotion.

"_I'm a monster, Riza. I deserve death." _

_She sighed and pried his finger off the trigger. "We are murderers. That much is clear, and it is unavoidable. We are murderers," she murmured, glancing up into his eyes. "But if you do not face your sins, there is no way to atone for them. Suicide is the coward's way out, not the hero's. Think about it, sir. If you die now, by suicide, the history books will say you were nothing but a murderer that couldn't handle his guilt," She paused again, wrapping her calloused fingers around his and squeezing gently. "But if we live, there is a chance that we can at least try to erase our guilt. It is not a guarantee, but it's better than death." _

His eyes glancedup towards the pink and orange sky from the setting sun. The brightest stars were just beginning to show, their bright light piercing through the thin, wispy autumn clouds.

"What are you doing here, Colonel? We've been looking for hours."

He hardly dared to turn around. Roy chuckled dryly. "I apologize, Hawkeye. I wandered and ended up here."

She sighed and examined him quickly, her amber eyes darting from his head to his boots. "You're still sober. That's good. Get inside, sir. I need to call the rest of the team and fill you in on the trial."

"Thank you," he said quietly, following her indoors. "You always know what to do with me."

There was a no hint of a smile in her voice as she responded. "Well, Roy, that's my job."

Roy felt the corners of his mouth twitch up into a tiny smile despite the businesslike tone in her voice and the seriousness of the situation. He was going on trial, he was a criminal, and half of Amestris was against him, that was all true. But she had called him Roy. That was rare.

"Sir, get inside."

His small grin erased itself as he snapped back to attention. "Yes, of course, sorry."

She stepped in after him and closed the door before flicking on the light. "Would you like some tea, sir?"

"If you're making it, thank you."

The stiff atmosphere did not escape him, but he sat down anyway and shrugged off his filthy coat. Something was bothering Riza, and Roy had a sneaking suspicion it had to do with him. His eyes passed over her bookshelf absentmindedly, scanning the titles of each volume before passing on to the next. They were all the type of book that he expected Riza to read: something different, an escape from her life, but not so abstract that she couldn't lose herself in the story. The trend was obvious until he paused on one particularly battered spine.

_The Complete Collection of Fairy Tales._

He had once given her a book of fairy tales for her birthday, her tenth birthday. She had hugged it tight to her chest on that day, and then he had never seen it again. He had spent five more years in the Hawkeye house after giving her that book, and he had never seen it once. It couldn't be the copy he had given her all those years ago. Riza wasn't the type of person to keep something like that.

_Or maybe, _he mused as he glanced through the doorway to the kitchen where he could hear her talking on the phone, _she was exactly the type of person to do that._

Roy stood up and reached out to slide the book off the shelf. Once it was safely in his hands, he flipped open the front cover and his mouth quirked up into a smile yet again.

_To Riza:_

_You never smile, or you don't do it nearly often enough. I like it better when you smile. I hope these will make you smile, even if I'm not around to see it._

_Happy birthday, _

_Roy_

He wondered where she had hidden it all those years. He had looked for it several times, when they had been talking and a vague tale from the book had been brought up. She had never offered help, and he had always failed, leaving them in an awkward state of two unsure, shy people with nothing to talk about. He had only ever been shy with her, his teacher's daughter.

Footsteps echoed louder in his ears until they stopped abruptly. Roy looked up like a guilty child and closed the book immediately. Riza set the two mugs of tea on the side table before making her way over to see which book he had been looking in. "My fairy tales? Why are you looking at that one?" she asked, glancing between him and the book.

"You kept it," he said simply, opening the front cover and pointing to his short birthday note from so long ago. "I never saw it again. I thought you had thrown it away."

She took it out of his hands and put it back onto the shelf. "That's because it was under my pillow," she confessed, a red tint covering her cheeks. "One tale every night lasted me a year, then I started over again."

"But you kept it. Why did you keep it?" he asked quietly.

She glanced up at him, then back at the gift from so long ago. "It was the first present I ever received."

**Went on to upload this and discovered that only five of my fourteen documents uploaded onto ff hadn't timed out. There's a great example of life getting in the way of things! XP**

**So anyway, review please! I really want to hear your opinions on this chapter: really really REALLY want to hear your opinions. So please take three seconds and review!**

**Sunarose and Songfire15 were my wonderful beta fairies :D This was a lot more rough before they yelled at me, so go give them cookieS! **


	11. Reservation

Al poked his head out of the row of dusty shelves and scanned for Mei. After a second of mild panic during which he thought that she had left, he finally found Xiao Mei poking a black-and-white head out of a mountain of books. Grimacing at his own pile of books, he carefully made his way over to her, setting down the books as gently as he could. There was still a sizable _thump _as they contacted the table, displaying the weight of all the paper. As he slid into the seat next to her, Al glanced over Mei's shoulder. "Find anything about the trial, Mei?"

Mei jumped, her concentration broken. As she blushed, she cast her book aside and picked up a different one. "I'm sorry, Alphonse," she murmured, "My fault."

Al smiled. "It's okay, Mei. This place has a huge section of alchemy textbooks, I got distracted a few minutes ago. What are you looking at?"

He only received a small sniffle in reply. "Mei?" Al asked. A book on military protocol rose up to cover her face. He furrowed his brow and tried to wrestle the book out of her grasp, but Mei would not allow him to see her face. Once the book was finally out of her hands, she resorted to burying her face in her hands and arms.

"Mei, what's wrong?" he asked, puzzled.

"Nothing, Alphonse, I'm fine," she said, her voice, already soft, muffled even more by the desk.

"No, you're not fine. Why don't you look at me, we can talk about it," Al offered.

She raised her head a fraction and looked at him with one teary eye, the other still hidden. "You'll hate me, Alphonse, you really will."

"You're crying! Why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying!" she countered, her voice squeaking up a pitch.

"You know, I won't hate you, Mei. I promise, okay?" he said hopefully, glancing at her tiny panda before settling his gaze back on her eye and smiling hopefully.

Her head raised another fraction. "Really, Alphonse? It's terrible, it really is."

"I promise, Mei," he said. She let out a final sniffle and raised her head all the way before reaching for the medical text again. Al watched as she squinted at the table of contents and slowly flipped to a page before setting down the book.

"It's just that…I don't know what Miss Riza has, Alphonse!" she wailed, earning a harsh "_Shush!" _from the librarian and collapsing on the textbook, burying her face in her arms again with new sobs.

"What?" Al exclaimed. "But Mei, you said you were certain! You said you knew!"

"You're angry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

Al hesitated and took in a deep breath. "I'm not angry, Mei, just disappointed. If you weren't sure, you should have said so."

She raised her head and wiped away her tears. "I'm sorry, Alphonse, I really am. But everyone was looking so hopeful, that maybe I was the answer and I could help, and maybe I was the answer, and you all seemed so _sure _of it – I just had to say _something! _I couldn't just say that I didn't know and disappoint all of you again! I thought it was Guillain-Barre, but I have no real way of knowing, and the more I look at all these books, the less I know!" She paused to point at several different headings. "It could be these, it could be Guillain-Barre. You're angry at me, I know it, and now you hate me-"

"Mei!" Al interrupted. "I never said that! I don't hate you, and I'm not angry – no one hates you, okay?"

"But…but it could be this," a page was flipped and an illness was pointed to, "Or this one," she said as she turned back to the table of contents, "or some hugely mutated form of neuralgia or practically _anything, _and nothing fits right, nothing!"

Al watched the pages fly back and forth with slight awe. He had no clue just how many illnesses and ailments there were in the world. None of his research had ever focused on medicines like _this._ "Well," he ventured, "no diagnosis is ever really certain, right? Sometimes a person has to go with their best guess and hope that it's right, or keep watching to try to get a clearer image. If you're really bothered, you can tell Miss Riza, but she seems better and she probably has enough to worry about right now."

The pages stopped turning and Mei looked up at Al with big, red eyes, wet from tears. "Y-you're right, Alphonse. Thank you so much."

He scraped back his chair and smiled, hiding his disappointment from the little Xingese girl. "Of course, Mei. It's all okay," he reassured her as he returned to the shelves. Once she was out of sight, he sighed and leaned against a bookshelf. It was a mistake on Mei's part to keep that all hidden and to try to save the day, but who was he to blame her? Faced with all those people at the hospital desperately seeking some sort of answer, he would have caved too and given an illness that might not have been the real one.

Al grimaced and hoped that her mistake would not become a problem later on.

~*Break*~

He was jerked out of his stupor by a firm knock on the door. Grumbling, he pushed his chair back and swept his hand over the table, knocking over his half-filled shot glass and coating the table with whiskey. Muttering several curses, he stumbled to the door and fumbled with the knob before finally managing to turn it and pull open the door. Squinting at the woman in the hallway did not help him identify her, and it took an irritated, tired sigh and greeting for him to finally realize who it was.

"I hope I'm not bothering you, sir."

"Hawkeye!" he laughed, motioning her in. "Nah, you aren't interrupting anything, just a little drink before bed."

Her eyebrows rose at the sound of the slur in his voice as she stepped over the threshold. "A _little _drink, sir? You're dead drunk."

He shook his head vehemently. "Not drunk, only a little!"

"I'm sure, sir," she replied, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "And exactly how many of these 'little drinks' have you had?"

He thought for a moment, then two, before scratching his head and shrugging lethargically. "Don't know, a few?"

Riza rubbed her temples. "When did you start drinking, sir?"

Roy shrugged again. "'Bout seven?"

"It's nearly midnight now, Colonel. I think it's safe to assume you're wasted," she replied patiently, shifting her papers and meeting his eyes for the first time.

"Am not!" he protested.

o0o0o0o

Riza didn't reply, judging the argument to be a fruitless one. After several moments of silence, she finally spoke again. "I'm sorry to bother you at this time of night, sir, but I just got some news from Master Sergeant Fuery. He got a phone call from Major Moore in West City about an hour ago. She's going to be at the trial, and she will speak for us if need be."

"Moore? Who's that, Hawkeye?" he asked, trying vainly to prove that he was sober with words only half slurred.

"Rachel Taylor Moore, sir. She was in Ishval for about two months. Brunette, about a year older than I was."

He spent a moment in deep concentration, his face falling at the very thought of Ishval. "I envied her. She got away and nothing bad happened."

Riza swallowed, attempting to banish a growing lump in her throat. "Actually, sir, she didn't get away entirely," she replied, searching through the papers on her clipboard and pulling one out. As she handed it to him, she continued her thought. "Her little brother Andrew was killed several weeks after she arrived home. They never convicted the killer, but all the facts led to the military high command."

He didn't look at the picture, instead choosing to hand it back to her immediately. She nodded and replaced it, knowing the look in his eyes even if it was muted by alcohol.

"I wanted to get away from that, Hawkeye, not see it more," he muttered, slumping against the wall.

Riza nodded and turned to leave. "Go to sleep, sir. You need your rest."

He grabbed her arm, but his grip was loose. "Not as much as I used to. They won't leave, Hawkeye. I keep seeing their faces."

The apartment was dead silent yet again as she turned slowly. "I don't know why I did this anyway," she murmured to herself. "You'll forget it by morning anyhow. All you'll remember from tonight is blurry alcohol and Ishval."

"No, I won't, I promise!" he protested. "I got a memory that's too good, that's the problem."

She removed her shoes and hung her coat up. "I'll put on some tea, sir. You should drink some water."

Roy watched as Riza turned into his tiny kitchen and heard yet another sigh. "I'm done, sir," she confessed, stepping back to face him. "We're getting rid of all of your alcohol tonight, because if I find you slobbering drunk one more time I'll have to shoot you."

He let out a small whine of protest as he watched her mop up his spilled whiskey and toss the half empty bottle into the trash with a dull _thunk_.

"Where's the rest of it, sir?" she demanded quietly. It seemed a question as he heard it, but the more his eyes couldn't break away from her stare, the more he realized that she was not going to take no for an answer. It was her own quiet way of ordering, one that he hardly saw.

"Over there, in that cabinet," he slurred sadly, taking her orders and throwing down a glass of water instead of whiskey. Roy sighed and refilled it, staring at the rippling surface. "It's not as good. Please don't throw away more, Riza. I like whiskey."

There were more heavy _thunks _into his trash can as his lieutenant quickly emptied the cabinet. "I know it isn't, sir, but you will thank me later when your hangover isn't as bad as it could be."

"'l save me the trouble and thank you now, Hawkeye," he muttered darkly, resting his chin on the table. "That's okay, right?"

She nodded, finishing with the cabinet and closing the wooden doors with a soft click. She straightened up and filled the teapot with water. Roy watched as she opened a drawer and pulled out tea that he hadn't known he owned. The water was annoying – tasteless, clear, and it didn't burn the way alcohol did. It wasn't going to make him forget, or ease any of his pain. It was just going to sit there and make him think of rain.

"Drink, sir. It'll help."

Roy obeyed, standing to fill his glass again. Riza looked at the disheveled mess that was her colonel and reached out a shy hand to smooth his hair. "You have to take better care of yourself, sir. If you drink like this whenever Ishval is mentioned, someone will find out about it. I'm watching your back, sir, and this is one thing I have to do. Please trust me."

He reached around the back of her head and pulled her hairclip out with a gentle tug. "I trust you, Riza. More than anybody else in the world." His words were still slightly slurred, but they were as sincere as his fogged mind could give them.

"I'm sure, Colonel. Thank you."

A smile slowly spread across his face, making Riza reconsider her words. As she turned away, his smile began to drop. "You're prettier with your hair down, Riza."

He didn't see her blush, but she felt it. Riza turned her attention to the teapot – whistling now – and pretended she hadn't heard his compliment. "More water, sir. Eat some fruit if you have any."

"I like fruit," he stated, slamming down his water glass. "Don't have any, though."

"I know, sir," she murmured. "If you had had any, it would have helped, that's all," Roy slid back into his chair and watched as she set a mug of steaming tea in front of him. "It's hot, don't burn yourself."

"Wha's this?"

"It's tea, sir. My mother's special blend," Riza replied patiently, as if speaking to a small child.

His brow furrowed. "Bu' it was in my cupboard. I don't have tea."

"I keep some here, sir, for when you don't call. You never use that drawer – there are a few things that I keep in there for times like this."

There was silence as both of them took sips of hot tea. It was not awkward, but there was no comfort in it. Things were hanging unspoken in the air, things that had hung so long between them that the invisible strings holding them there seemed to be fraying away. Neither Roy nor Riza had the courage to say the words, and Riza had never said them enough to understand their importance.

There were ten days left until the trial.

He woke up the next morning sprawled out on his couch with two empty mugs on his kitchen table and every single bottle of alcohol he owned mysteriously missing from his cabinet.

Roy sighed, rubbed his head, and cleared the mugs into the sink. Last night was nothing but a blur, but two things were clear to him – a drawer with Hawkeye's mother's tea hidden in his apartment, and the Granite Alchemist, Rachel Taylor Moore. Whatever they had to do with the evening before mystified him. Major Moore was a state alchemist fresh out of the exam when she had been thrown into Ishval. She had been a year older than Riza, and several weeks into her campaign, she began to break down.

It had not been pretty. Slow at first, but growing steadily worse as more people were killed. The tears had come first, then the sobs, then the screams and refusal to fight. Many of the soldiers had envied her as she was escorted away, curled up in the fetal position and dead silent with the eyes of the corpses. At the time, Roy had envied her. Now, he looked back and saw nothing but a scared young woman – almost still a girl – forced to kill and not strong enough to endure a mass murder.

She was like Riza. He shuddered to think of Riza being dragged away like Major Moore had been, or Riza suffering like Major Moore had, but no one was spared the horror of Ishval. Everyone was affected, no matter if they yelled it to the world or showed their pain silently (or even not at all). They were different, Riza and Rachel, but they were so alike.

Roy wondered vaguely why he had thought of Major Moore like he had. According to Breda, she was currently in West City overseeing troop deployment – still not trusted with the battlefield. Roy doubted she would ever be trusted on the battlefield again.

He wished no one had reason to be on the battlefield, but that was the wish of a naïve child. They were human, and humans were stubborn, reckless creatures. Fighting was natural. Fighting was survival, and there was nothing else to say about it.

But no matter its necessity or ease, he still wished he was a child again. Life was simpler then, and there was less to worry about.

And he had no idea what a hangover was. Roy sighed and rubbed his head, trying to rid himself of the headache – it wasn't _bad, _he supposed, much better than some, but it was sufficiently annoying. Abandoning the idea of ridding himself of a headache, the colonel collapsed back onto the couch and went back to sleep. The last thought in his head before it was again too muddled to think was nothing but _I deserve this. All of it._

_~*Break*~_

Gracia considered herself an excellent judge of character – the exact reason that she had assigned herself the tedious task of making sure that Roy's lawyer was informed and completely honest.

"Mommy," whispered her daughter, cupping her hand around her mother's ear like she was telling her biggest secret. "I'm bored."

Gracia sighed. "I know, Elysia. After this one, we'll be done for today, okay? I'll send you to keep Winry company."

Elysia beamed, showing off her missing front tooth.

The office door opened suddenly, and Gracia looked up to meet eyes with a young man carrying a girl not much older than Elysia. He was smiling, and looked startled when he saw the mother and daughter sitting on the couch.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it was lunch break – didn't know anyone was coming in!" he said jovially.

Gracia smiled. "I can come back later, if you prefer."

"No, no, it's fine! How can I help you?" He set down the young girl, ruffled her blonde hair, and whispered something in her ear. She made a face before nodding and hiding behind his leg, wrapping her short arms tight around his calve. The man smiled, pried her arms off, and gave her a gentle push toward Gracia and Elysia.

"I'm Kiki, and I'm six," boasted the little girl, folding her arms across her chest and staring up at Elysia with large teal eyes.

Elysia slid off the couch and tugged one of her pigtails. "I'm Elysia, and I'm five and a half."

"You have a funny name."

"You have a funnier one."

Gracia and the young man groaned simultaneously. "Well, they're either going to be best friends, or they'll hate each other. I hope for the sake of all of us that it's the first!" he said, shrugging. "Kiki's a proud little one. My wife keeps telling me that I'm feeding the flames, but she's very charismatic," he said.

"She seems very nice. Elysia's shy until you get her going. Then she won't be quiet, of course," Gracia stood and smoothed her skirt before extending her hand. "My name is Gracia Hughes – I'm a friend of the Colonel's. Are you the one in charge of his tribunal?"

He nodded, grasping her delicate hand firmly. "James Morgan at your service. The laws governing war at the time of Ishval are what're hindering us. It seems Fuhrer Bradley messed them up so much that most of the orders he passed through might actually have made the slaughter legal. It's not final under any circumstances, but they could certainly argue that slaughter on that scale could never be legal."

Gracia nodded. "How can they argue that the Ishvalan massacre was illegal if Fuhrer Bradley made it legal?"

James ran his fingers through his auburn hair. "It's a bit complicated. Fuhrer Bradley made it look legal, but when you dig deeper, it was written so that any prosecution with a good lawyer can tear apart the defense. Unless the Colonel was being threatened with death, I don't know what I can do."

"So it's legal, but it's _not _legal?" Gracia asked, frowning.

He grimaced. "It should be legal, but it was written with too many loopholes. If he or someone very close to him was being threatened with death, I have ground. Otherwise, we bluff the trial."

"You'll have to talk to Roy and Riza about that one, I'm sorry. Even then I don't know how much they'll actually say. Some of it would be written off as false because it was impossible to prove."

James grimaced. "I suppose most everyone else from Ishval is gone?"

Gracia nodded. "Everyone that I can picture threatening them like that, yes."

The adults fell silent.

"Do you like puppies, Kiki? My uncle Roy loves puppies," Elysia asked, leaning in so her nose was inches from the other girl's freckles.

"Kitties are better, Elysia!" Kiki protested, poking her new friend in the shoulder.

"Okay, maybe. But my uncle is called a dog 'cause he's in the military, so he has to love dogs!"

"But dogs can't be uncles!"

"Only for pretend! He's not really a dog!"

"Oh. That makes more sense! What if you really had an uncle Doggie? That'd be silly!"

Elysia giggled and poked Kiki back. "Too silly! You have to be a dog to have an uncle Doggie!"

Kiki fell silent, a thoughtful fingertip resting on her nose. "What if… Your uncle Roy is a doggie?"

The concept was too much for Elysia to consider. She rolled on the floor, clutching her stomach as genuine laughter filled the office, making the graveness of the world seem just a bit lighter.

**Ugh. That was a bad chapter end. Heh. Sun Arose, say something this time. Don't forget. Forgetting is bad. **

**Hi guys! I REMEMBERED! Or Ivy reminded me. Yeah. All of you help me remind her never to write anything past nine again. The first time around, she accidentally named someone after the author of Maximum Ride. I wrote 71 comments during beta. Cookies anyway.**

**Ivy back now. It's all better now. It's been through two beta fairies and everything. Off to Worlds! I was freaking, because I couldn't find my double dutch ropes. But it's all okay now. Thanks to my two wonderful beta fairies. **

**Okay, bye guys! Please let me come back from Worlds with lots of reviews!**


	12. Conviction

The phone rang early, but it was not early enough to wake up Riza Hawkeye.

"_Hello, my name is James Morgan. I was told to call this number if there was anything I needed on the case. I'm terribly sorry I'm calling so early, but I wanted to be sure I reached the Colonel." _

Riza set down her mug. "I'll call him later and relay the news. What is it, Mr. Morgan?"

"_I need to speak with him concerning events in Ishval. Is it possible to arrange a time we could meet?" _

"Yes, it could be arranged. What time works for you, Mr. Morgan?" she asked, glancing at a painfully empty calendar with one day circled in red ink.

"_Would tonight for dinner work?" _

"I'll check with him, but I'm sure it is. Where would you like to meet us?"

"_Us? I'm sorry, I didn't realize the Colonel had a wife! It's a pleasure to work with you, Mrs. Mustang!" _

Riza curled her fingers into a tight fist, crinkling the sheet of paper and nearly breaking her pen. "I'm not his wife, Mr. Morgan, I'm his lieutenant, Riza Hawkeye. It's my job to protect Colonel Mustang, so I will be joining you for dinner."

The lawyer didn't respond right away, choosing his next words carefully. _"I'm terribly sorry, that was a very idiotic assumption, Lieutenant." _

"It's fine. Where would you like to meet us?"

"_Are you familiar with the Cretan café on Magnolia Street? Would five work?" _

Riza scribbled the information onto her crumpled paper. "I'll contact you if it won't. Goodbye, Mr. Morgan."

James began the "Good" in "Goodbye", but Riza slammed the phone into its cradle before he could finish. She scowled into her tea.

Only a week left, now. Seven precious days.

She snatched up her coat and walked briskly out the door.

~*Break*~

James winced as he set the phone down. "Marie," he called weakly, massaging his temples. "Would you mind getting me a cup of coffee?"

Marie smiled as she placed the mug on the end table. "Something wrong, James?"

"Thanks," he said, his tone distracted. "I was positive it was his wife on the phone. How could I be so idiotic?"

"Well," she chuckled, "that won't go down well, will it?"

James groaned. "She hates me."

"Now, I'm sure that's not the case," she reassured him, running her fingers through his permanently messy brown hair. "It was just a little misunderstanding."

"This is going to be a long day. A long, hard day. I'm going to need even more coffee."

"Well, that I can give you."

~*Break*~

Despite its size, the train station at East City was always packed to the brim, with trains rushing in and out at all hours of the day and night. Mei and Alphonse seemed to be the only two there not intending to catch a train, quickly getting lost in the crowd. Al managed to catch Mei's hand before they were separated, pulling her to a relatively open space off to the side.

"Who are we looking for, Alphonse?" Mei asked, her voice loud so he could hear her over the crowd

Al winced. "Rachel Taylor Moore, Mei. Brown hair, she probably won't be travelling in a uniform, but here's a photo."

The tiny Xingese princess studied the photograph before nodding. "Okay. The twelve-fifty train."

The clock struck twelve. Al's stomach growled in hunger. Years of malnourishment on his body had taken their toll – he always seemed to be hungry, no matter the hour in the day.

"Mei?"

"Yes, Alphonse?"

"Would you like to get some lunch?" he asked weakly, glancing wistfully at the tiny café on the other side of the station.

~*Break*~

The doorbell halted Marie's wild anecdote of James' proposal. "Now, who could that be?" she mused, tucking a stray wisp behind her ear.

Gracia watched Marie open the door and took a sip of her tea, curious as well but not rude enough to hover behind her.

The woman at the door was young, holding a large tray in one hand and clasping the hand of a little girl in the other. An older boy leaning on crutches was behind her. "Marie! I'm sorry if I'm interrupting anything, I wanted to thank James for looking over the papers for Theo's leg – I know he doesn't usually do that sort of thing, it was very kind of him," she gushed.

Marie smiled, relieving the woman of the dangerously wobbling tray and stepping aside to usher her in. "Come on in, Helen. This is Gracia and her daughter Elysia, they're just over for a play date. These tarts look wonderful!"

"Oh, thank you, Marie. Hello, Gracia, hello Elysia. I wish we could stay longer, but Theresa has ballet in an hour."

"Stay as long as you like, Helen," Marie said, disappearing into the kitchen and emerging a few seconds later with a much smaller plate of tarts. "You're always welcome in this house."

"My daddy makes bad people go to jail, Elysia!" Kiki squealed, jamming a frilly ball gown onto her dress.

"Mine did too, just in a different way!" argued Elysia, holding a doll high above her head and waving it around. "But he's not here anymore, so my uncle Roy has to now!"

Kiki frowned. "But your uncle Roy was bad during Ishval, right?"

Elysia's hands dropped and she leaned in so close to Kiki that their noses nearly touched. "But my uncle Roy was scared, Kiki," she whispered. "My daddy told me so!"

Gracia furrowed her brow. _When did Maes tell her all of this? She had to have been too young to remember._

"Scared?" Theresa asked, managing to worm her way into the conversation as she broke away from her mother's grasp

"Because a mean man told my uncle Roy that if he didn't fight, my auntie Riza and my daddy would get hurt really bad."

Helen froze as she listened to the last sentence, her narrowed eyes fixed on Gracia. "Uncle Roy?" she muttered.

"Roy Mustang," Gracia answered in a whisper. "My husband was Maes Hughes. The man that she's referring to is probably Major Kimblee."

"Then she had to have been very young when she heard this, didn't she?" Marie asked, biting her lip.

Gracia sighed and set her tea down onto the coffee table. "She remembers things with startling accuracy, really. Especially things she wasn't supposed to know, like that."

The other two women stared in disbelief at Elysia. "That's quite…interesting," Marie said, breaking the silence. "'Hurt really bad' means what exactly?"

"Killed," Gracia said in a whisper, so soft the children couldn't hear a sound. "Maes figured it out and confronted Roy about it years ago, just after Ishval. Maes told him that two soldiers were nothing when faced with what was out there. Roy said something about not being able to live a coward with both Maes and Riza gone."

"Oh god…" muttered Helen, wringing her hands "And all this time, I was convinced it was their fault my brothers died."

Gracia looked back at the smiling children. "No, that war had no purpose. It wasn't enemy fighting enemy, it was Amestris murdering innocents with the propaganda to back themselves up. I'm sorry about your brothers, I'm sure they were both just trying to do what was best for the country."

"Tart, anyone?" Marie asked weakly in a final effort to keep the conversation pleasant.

Helen glanced up at the clock. "Oh, I really should get going," she said apologetically."It was a pleasure to meet you, Gracia. I hope the trial goes well."

Gracia nodded. "I hope I'll see you again sometime."

Theresa left with a pout, unhappy to have to leave her friends. The boy followed with a significantly more relieved air, several steps behind his mother and sister. "Bye, Mrs. Morgan!" he said, stopping to turn and wave.

"Bye Theo. Heal up soon, okay?"

"I'll do my best!" he replied, closing the door behind him with a soft _thunk. _

"Family friends?" Gracia asked, picking up her tea again.

"Neighbors. Helen used to hate the military because of Ishval, but her mind has started to change since the eclipse."

"I see," murmured Gracia. "She seems like a lovely person."

"She has her flaws and her perks just like the rest of us. Her apple tarts are to die for, though. James loves them – care to sample one?

~*Break*~

Al hadn't expected Major Moore to be quite so twitchy. He had heard from Lieutenant Breda that she was a kind woman but that she suffered from shell shock because her experiences from Ishval.

The last thing he thought would happen, however, was that she would curl up into a ball when she mistook a car backfiring for gunshots. It took her several seconds to realize she was not on the battlefield and stand up again.

"Sorry," she murmured. "I'm not good with surprises."

"It's quite all right, Major Moore," piped up Mei, guiding the woman back into the car. "Nothing to apologize about."

He couldn't help but feel nervous about Rachel Taylor Moore. _If she acted this way around a car that backfired, would she be able to cope with talking about Ishval at the trial? _

_Would they accept her as a witness, knowing her mind was not healthy? _

"How was your trip, Major Moore?" Mei asked, a signature grin on her face once again.

"Don't call me by my rank, please. Rachel would be fine," she said, "And it was fine. Uneventful."

"Well, that's always good. What do you do in West City? I'm not familiar with all that the Amestrian military does yet."

Rachel glanced out the window. "I'm nothing but a pencil pusher now. I don't even know why they haven't discharged me yet, God knows I've made enough mistakes."

The car fell silent and the only noises they heard were those of scarce traffic and the quiet rumble of the car's engine.

"It's different here now. So alive," Rachel whispered. "That's why I had to come so quickly, to have time to adapt to the east again."

Neither Al or Mei dared say a word.

~*Break*~

James pulled nervously at his collar, business suit suddenly too stiff and heavy even in the crisp November chill that whistled through the air. Leaves, crunchy and brown, fluttered to the ground and skittered there for mere moments before they were flattened by evening traffic rushing back and forth.

He had arrived early – never keep a client waiting;that was his policy. So technically, Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye were not late. They were on time, even though it felt like he had been waiting for a long time.

"Thank you for making the arrangements on such short notice. I know this is not a request you see in most trials and I'm very grateful for the cooperation," he said stiffly, offering his hand. "Our table is right in here. I had it reserved this morning."

"Thank you, Mr. Morgan," Riza said, her eyes studying him intently.

Of course he had heard of her – who hadn't read a novel's worth of information on the infamous "Hawk's Eye" of Ishval? Had anyone in Amestris somehow missed the many newspaper articles detailing her "shocking past"? Each story was different. Dead parents, murdered parents, impeccable aiming skills, the sins she committed during Ishval.

But looking at her, James realized that each and every one of those newspapers was a downright lie. This woman could not be evaluated by a story or two.

He winced, remembering that morning's phone call. _Idiot, _he told himself. _I'll never have a clean slate with her. _

Then there was Colonel Mustang himself. He hovered behind his lieutenant, his eyes shifting to the right and left before meeting James' own. James knew he was constantly aware of danger, and also one that was obviously bothered by something. He had the darkest bags under his eyes that James had ever seen.

"I'll get right to the point, because I feel like you two aren't ones to dance around a subject," he said as soon as they sat down. "Anything to drink?" he asked, waving down a waitress.

"Water will be fine, thank you."

"Water for me as well," Roy replied, slipping his hat off onto the seat beside him and quirking his lips into a grateful smile at the attractive waitress.

Riza's sideways glance did not escape James – there was little when it came to body language that James missed.

"Three waters, then," he told her.

"I'll have that for you right away," she said before she flounced away.

"Were you ever threatened, Colonel? In Ishval?" James asked. If he had still been a rookie law student, he would have been holding his breath in anticipation.

Roy sighed, and Riza's hand moved up to his shoulder before she faltered and dropped it back into her lap. "Several times," he said, his black eyes locking with James'. "But the man that did it disappeared on the day of the eclipse, and the only witness is Lieutenant Hawkeye."

"I've been at the Colonel's side too long for any testimony of mine to be accepted as the truth," Riza added, accepting her water from the waitress once she returned.

James nodded. "There was no place you wrote it down, no one else you told?"

"My journals went missing," Riza answered, shaking her head. "The first thing I've lost since I don't even know when."

"You didn't lose them," Roy retorted, scowling. "You don't lose things. They were stolen, and you know it."

"Colonel, not now."

Roy had no answer and took a sullen swallow of his water.

"No one you told?" James inquired again, making a mental note to recall the journals later.

"Long dead, now," Roy muttered. "Maes Hughes."

He bit back a sigh."Well, that's…unfortunate," he managed.

A glance at Hawkeye told James that he had once again miscalculated. "Would you…tell me about Ishval?" he asked gently, trying to maintain eye contact. _Damn, it was difficult. _

"The first thing you have to understand about Ishval, Mr. Morgan, is that it was hell," Mustang replied bitterly. "Ever imagined hell?"

"I can't say I have," he said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and pulling at his collar.

"Well, it's full of screams, blood, and the smell of burnt corpses."

"_Sir, the Arad district has been secured," declared a messenger as he saluted Roy._

_Mustang saluted half-heartedly back at the boy to dismiss him before slipping on his gloves. "Any of our men down there, Cadet Hawkeye?" he asked wearily as he climbed a rickety ladder to the top of the bell tower._

"_None, sir." _

_There was a snap that echoed painfully around the bell tower and Roy looked down to survey the chaos he created. A fireball engulfed the street below, the screams of pain soon silenced by death. He had made their deaths short – all he could do. "We'll have to finish off this sector by tonight, you know," he muttered, turning to the next street over. "A week is too much delay for them. Kimblee's started to ask about our progress, the bastard. Apparently if we aren't quick enough he'll start following through on his threats."_

"_What else do you expect?" _

_Half the district was burning already. The stink of the burnt flesh finally hit them, and their eyes watered from the sting of the rising smoke. Neither would admit to anything more. Riza wiped her eyes and raised her rifle, peering through the scope to find any struggling survivors. _

_He continued to set things alight, ignoring the sting in his own eyes. What did it matter if he were off by a few degrees? The entire district would be blazing soon anyway._

_One of the huge walls surrounding the district sank back into the ground and a figure raced into the blazing inferno. Two others followed the figure, dragging it away from the Arad district and replacing the stone wall. _

"_Someone cracked, sir," Riza said quietly, peering through the sights of her sniper rifle for a better view at the poor soldier. It dropped seconds later, and she wiped her brow, leaving streaks of dirt in place of the sweat. "It's the Granite Alchemist." _

_He sighed but did not reply, lighting another street._

"_Not a surprise, I suppose. She's been losing it for weeks," Riza muttered._

"_They'll send her back home now that she's endangered her comrades. It'll be a miracle if they let her stay in the military." _

"_A miracle is an odd choice of words to describe that, Major." _

"_Indeed it is, Hawkeye." _

"_Excuse me, are you Mr. Morgan?" the waitress asked, interrupting Roy and Riza before they could finish their story._

"Yes, I am," James said, glancing up at her.

"There's a phone call from your wife. She said it was important."

He nodded and stood up. "I'm going to have to take this, I apologize."

They nodded and stared at their menus without appetite. "They were stolen, and you know it, Riza."

"You're nothing but a big conspiracy theorist, _Colonel. _Just because they went missing does not mean they were stolen, though I'll admit it is very strange," she replied.

"When was the last time the great Riza Hawkeye, the one who finds a pin on the floor of the office three days after Fuery dropped it, lost something?"

"I don't know, but we're human and we can't keep an eye on everything in our lives at all times. They're somewhere at my house, I'm sure."

"Exactly. You don't remember, because it's never happened."

"Untrue."

He glared at her over his menu, childishly upset to lose a battle as small as this one.

~*Break*~

"Marie, I'm with the Lieutenant and the Colonel," James muttered, worry lines creasing his forehead.

"_I know James, I'm sorry. But you need to know this." _

"What is it? Is something wrong?"

"_I had Gracia and Elysia over today and Helen stopped by to thank you for looking over the papers for Theo's leg. While she was there, Elysia and Kiki somehow got on the subject of Ishval and…" _Marie's voice trailed off. James knew the tone of voice his wife was using and exactly how she was twisting the cord of the phone in anxiety. He braced himself for news that would make or break the case.

"_Elysia overheard a conversation she wasn't supposed to hear when she was very young. Before her father died, he confided in Gracia that during Ishval, a man named Kimblee threatened Lieutenant Hawkeye and Colonel Mustang with each other's deaths and also Gracia's husband – Maes Hughes. If Mustang and Hawkeye had run from Ishval, anyone they left behind would have been killed." _

James' fingers slipped, and he barely managed to catch the phone before it fell. "Gracia Hughes told you this?"

"_After Helen left, yes. I forgot to tell you when you got home, but Kiki mentioned it before she went to bed." _

"I…I see," he said, rubbing his temple.

"_Is everything going all right, James?" _

"Yes, yes, it's all going fine. I'll talk more when I get home."

"_Love you, James." _

"Love you too. Goodbye."

The line went dead and James replaced the phone. His collar finally loosened when he tugged it once more.

Sadly, it didn't help the lump that continued to grow in his throat.

~*Break*~

**Hi everyone! Sun Arose, long-suffering beta reader, here. I don't know why Ivy isn't paying me for this. I spent an hour and a half on a perfectly good afternoon reading, criticizing, double-checking and adding "floofy" to the dictionary on Word... However, I am not complaining *cough**_**much**_**cough* and I shall be optimistic and I say NICE JOB IVY! XD**

**But seriously, I wrote 148 comments! ...Anyway, go back to being nice to her.**

**I'm helping her on cosplay and I'm just that awesome, that's why she's not getting paid. If she doesn't do Iggy and Momo, I'm going to be VERY ANGRY. She has to do Momo anyway, because a skit doesn't work with three people as well as it does with four. **

**Review please! I'd love to hear your feedback!**


	13. Apprehension

The days ticked by faster and faster, as if they disregarded the system of minutes and hours and simply charged ahead without heed to all involved.

Three days before the trial, a woman with a thick white braid down to her waist stepped onto the platform, the thunderous engine of the train ringing in her ears. She had obviously been pretty in the past, but now her face was lined with premature wrinkles that deepened when she frowned. Before she had time to take a breath, she was whisked away by a man with a long, hard face and gray in his hair

At the end of the day, the conductor would tell his wife of the mysterious silent woman on the train, and his wife would frown, her brow furrowing, as she tried to comprehend why an Ishvalan woman would be journeying to East City in the middle of November.

~0o0~

Two days before the trial, Roy answered his door in the late evening and was greeted with Riza holding out his dress uniform.

"Hang it up right away, sir, and if it wrinkles _don't _try to iron it yourself."

He nodded, unsure whether to laugh or salute. "Wouldn't dream of it, Hawkeye."

"It's good you're thinking straight, Colonel."

She turned to go, and Roy nearly grabbed her arm to stop her.

_But what was there to tell her?_

He watched her go with a stone lodged in the bottom of his heart.

~0o0~

Winry and Mei spent most of the day before the trial together.

"Mei?"

_Although, _Winry pondered as she waved her hand in front of Mei's eyes, _it would probably be more accurate to say_ _Mei was spending it with the medical textbooks_.

"Oh! I'm sorry, Winry, I really am!" Mei apologized, her cheeks flushing pink. "These books, they're just so fascinating, I can't help myself."

Winry smiled at the flustered princess, heaving one of the largest volumes into her lap. "This one has the information about automail, right?"

Mei nodded, barely glancing at the heavy tome in Winry's hands. "I don't know much about automail, I'm sorry if it's no use to you."

Winry didn't open the book right away, instead choosing to duck her head forward in an attempt to read the title of the volume Mei was so intrigued by.

"The Theory of Disease Mutation?" she asked.

Mei's already pink cheeks darkened. "Oh! Yes, it's… it's very interesting, Amestris has so much knowledge about medicine, much more than I do, I…"

She trailed off, raising the book to cover her eyes and attempting to immerse herself once again.

The older girl wasn't convinced in the slightest. "But it was you who diagnosed Miss Riza, and she got better after you did."

"Oh, yes, I…I….I suppose."

The silence that followed was too heavy for either girl to shrug off. Winry finally gave up on the conversation and flicked open the book on automail.

Something was bothering Mei, and Winry was going to find out exactly what it was.

~.o.o.~

A man with an expertly trimmed gray mustache and flashing glasses stepped off of the train, closely followed by two solemn guards. All three were clothed in the dark blue wool of the Amestrian military, and the mass of gold on the oldest man's shoulders displayed his rank proudly.

The Fuhrer had arrived.

He waved his companions behind him, and they grudgingly followed at a distance. Grumman smiled, tipping his neck back to look at the train schedule.

As if on cue, the roar of an engine and screech of a whistle drowned out the hubbub of the train station. Grumman's self-satisfied smile lost its humor._ What a coincidence. Certainly saves the trouble of the press._

She was the first one off – he had, quite honestly, expected it (she was certainly not one to wait around) – and spotted him as she scanned the station with her frosty blue eyes.

"Major General Armstrong. What a pleasure."

Her salute was stiff – he was surprised that she would even bother with such a formality, considering she had never truly tolerated him in the past.

Grumman waved off the salute. "At ease, soldier."

"I wasn't aware you were arriving today, sir," she said, stiff and formally disdainful. Grumman turned and motioned for her to join him.

"Well, to be quite honest, Armstrong, neither was I," Grumman chuckled. "The arrangements were made at the last minute."

They walked in silence for several seconds before Grumman spoke again.

"You hope to become Fuhrer one day, correct?"

"Yes, sir," she replied, still cold.

"You don't have to be so formal with me. I have absolutely no say in the next Fuhrer, and we have known each other long enough that formalities are hardly the matter."

"Thank god," she muttered, folding her arms across her chest.

His smile was brief. "Have your thoughts on Roy Mustang changed since we spoke last?"

Olivier's eyes widened. "I would not stoop so low as to tarnish the Armstrong name by entering a military tribunal governed by my personal assumptions," she replied, any anger that she felt perfectly masked.

He felt an unexpected sense of relief wash over him. "Good. You never served in Ishval, did you?"

"That is correct."

"How much do you know about it?"

"Enough to know it shouldn't have happened, sir."

"It is my belief that Brigadier General Brown and Lieutenant General Haywood have their own assumptions about Colonel Mustang. Jennings as well. I'm glad you have been able to put aside your personal opinions, Armstrong."

He stopped and pulled on his overcoat before stepping into the chilly November air. "I'll see you tomorrow morning."

Olivier stood in the doorway and watched the Fuhrer disappear into the crowds of people. She hadn't felt sick to the stomach since her days at the academy, but now it suddenly turned beneath her skin. Something told her that one person would decide if Roy Mustang lived or died.

_Her._

~0o0~

The static of the radio was his only companion in his late-night preparation for the case. It wasn't like James to cram like a schoolboy the night before a test, but this one was different. _There are just too many holes in this, _he cursed to himself, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his shirt. _Maybe he wasn't going to cut it._

His pen stalled in its scribbling, and James glanced at the pitiful amount of information he had managed to gather on Colonel Mustang's experiences in Ishval.

"Bullshit," he muttered, his brow creasing as static buzzed in his ears. "They chose me and trusted me with all of this. If I can't repay them for that, I'm a lousy lawyer."

The white noise of a radio had always calmed him before, but now he realized what a foolish notion that was. James sighed and reached forward through the sea of paper to turn the radio off before pushing back his chair. A terrified squeak echoed in the hallway, and James rubbed his temples to hide a tiny smile.

"I know you're there, Kiki. You can stop hiding now."

His daughter's face appeared in the doorway. "I wasn't hiding!" she protested. "I was thirsty!"

"Mommy and I tucked you in two hours ago. You should be asleep by now," he said, only half speaking to his daughter.

"Are you angry, Daddy?" she asked quietly, staring down at her bare toes.

He smiled. "Not as angry as Mommy would be if she knew. Come on, let's tuck you in again. We must have made a mistake," he swooped in low and poked Kiki in the stomach, grinning, "because you escaped!"

"Daddy!" she giggled. Soon they were both laughing, and Marie came downstairs to send them both off to bed.

It was much later before James returned to his work with Kiki asleep and Marie in the kitchen, making another pot of coffee for the husband that refused to go to bed. He glanced at the clock and sighed – it _was _late.

But it wasn't too late. Not in the least.

~.o.~

He couldn't sleep.

There were too many thoughts whirring about in his head – no different than all through the past two months. Roy couldn't remember getting a full night of sleep since September.

He doubted he would so much as shut his eyes tonight.

~.o.o.~

It hadn't been November when she had been here before, and even the air had changed since then. It had taken her a day to figure it out – what exactly was different. Rachel had realized it a few hours before. There was no longer any fear.

No fear of the Ishvalans, or of the soldiers that marched through on their way to a war too close for comfort. She was a fool not to have realized it then, but she had been a spoiled little girl.

Her father had called her his little princess.

Her mother had claimed she would rise to do great things.

Andrew, her baby brother, had always insisted she was beautiful.

Yet here she was, broken beyond all repair, stuck at a desk, filling out paperwork that sent young men and women to their deaths.

In the hospitals, they called her condition "post-traumatic stress disorder". "Shell shock"was the term everywhere else she seemed to go, but she couldn't help but feel like it was something…

_More._

The night air was cold on her skin, and Rachel relaxed at last. It was cold here, bitterly cold – not at all like Ishval. Maybe she would be able to make it through the trial without yet another breakdown. Damn, did she hate those breakdowns, that feeling of helplessness and fragility.

"Miss, you must be freezing."

The voice, although gentle and concerned, sent a stone to the bottom of her stomach. She didn't like strangers.

"Here, have my jacket," they offered, and Rachel could hear the rustle of heavy fabric.

She felt a weight on her shoulders before finally turning around.

The stranger pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He seemed vaguely familiar to Rachel, but the shadows kept him just out of recognition. "Are you all right?" he asked, his tone full of concern.

Her voice a low whisper as she lifted the coat off and held it out towards the young man. "I'm not cold. Thank you for your concern."

The stranger shrugged, smiled, and accepted his coat back. "Are you lost?"

She considered her answer briefly, and as another bitter breeze whistled in their ears, whipping her bangs into her eyes, Rachel sighed. "In a way, I think."

He opened his mouth as if to offer help, but she shook her head. "It's not that sort of lost. You can't help me, even if you want to.

He tipped his hat, revealing messy dark hair. There was no smile in his voice or on his face any more. "I don't know that kind of lost very well, but I'm sure you'll overcome it. The people I know have, at least, and I'm sure you can. Just don't give up."

It took time for him to disappear from her sight, the streetlamps casting odd shadows on the dark coat he had offered her. Rachel combed her hair with her fingers absentmindedly, eyes unfocused. "No," she murmured, long after he was out of earshot. "I've given up. But that doesn't mean they have to."

~.o.o.~

The sun never seemed to rise that day. Clouds masked the sky, thick and gray, covering a sleepy East City in a haze. Riza stood at the base of the staircase to the courtroom, her stomach heavy.

The day was almost too fitting for a military tribunal, but instead of rain the heavy clouds threatened snow. It never snowed in East City in November. She took the first step onto the staircase, the heel of her shoe echoing in the early morning silence. Only one thought seemed to linger in her mind, above the

_This trial would be the end of her._

It was enough that he was on trial - true, they had expected it, planned for it, but to have it come so quickly was a shock. That alone was enough to break her, but to know that if he was convicted, only he would be punished (even though she was just as guilty). She would not be able to follow him wherever he may be after this trial.

Riza knew the generals that would be deciding his fate, but most only by name and reputation. There were six that were supposed to judge military tribunals, but the Aerugan and Cretan borders were too delicate to leave without generals in charge. Fuhrer Grumman would serve as a judge and, if necessary, a tiebreaker.

Maybe she was a fool to put so much faith in a court case full of messily-mended holes and a womanizing alchemist. James Morgan was a good lawyer – even if he did jump to conclusions about relationships - butt even the best lawyer couldn't always prove a man innocent when all of the facts were against him.

Especially when the man believed himself guilty.

**I know it took a long time, and Sun Arose is probably ripping her hair out yet again over this beta. I'm sorry, I really am! **

**Merry Christmas, everyone! Almost done with this story, after a year and a month. Wow.**

**Reviews are love Think of them as your Christmas present to me!**


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